by Mike Mcquay
Success was impossible. Survival nearly so. When it was clear to Plissken that they couldn’t get the man out, they plastic charged the building that he was being held in and buried him under five hundred tons of rock and plaster.
Sometime during the fighting a frag cracked Plissken’s left goggle, and the nerve gas went to work on his eye. Somehow he ordered the withdrawal and got back to base. It was like his whole head was on fire, bright orange fire. When the gliders touched down again, there were only two of them left. Just two.
He spent a month in the hospital before they even let Taylor come visit. The man was in a leg cast; his knee had been shattered in a crash landing getting back into Helsinki. He was pale like an albino when he came in, and his eyes were just as red.
“It was all a trick,” Taylor said to him there in that sterile hospital room. “A lousy, fuckin’ trick.”
It turned out that the “Intelligence officer” was actually a corporal in masquerade who let himself be captured to give false information. Plissken’s squad had been sent in just to lend the whole thing an air of authenticity. To make matters worse, it didn’t work. The man hadn’t fooled them for a minute.
Snake Plissken’s life began to change at that exact instant.
The PACIFIC EXPRESS spoke was completely deserted. Nobody in his right mind went west. Nobody but crazy men and outlaws. He kept moving until he came to another escalator, then started down to the subway platform.
He hit bottom and moved through semidarkness. He saw Taylor just ahead, crouched down by the wall. Plissken moved silently up to him. The man was small, with darting eyes and a weak face. He wasn’t weak, though, just put upon. He wore a cap and fatigue jacket that still bore the stitch marks on the sleeve to show where the sergeant’s stripes used to be. His hands were lost up to the wrists in the wiring of a terminal box that was set into the wall.
“How are you, Sarge?” Plissken asked when he got up close.
Taylor didn’t even flinch. “Surviving,” he replied, then his eyes drifted up to Plissken’s. They shared a look, then the eyes drifted down to the satchel in Plissken’s hand. Taylor had the bag’s twin beside him on the floor.
“You’re early,” the little man said,
“They’re on my ass.”
Taylor nodded once and turned back to the panel, cursing softly to himself. He worked quickly, expertly. All at once, he sat back with a grunt. “That’s it,” he said.
His words were followed by the clank of a subway train moving down the platform. It got right next to them, then wheezed to a stop.
“Let’s go,” Plissken said, and started for the train. Taylor got to his feet and followed, his bad leg making him limp slightly.
They got inside just as the door was closing. The car was old. The garish neon lit the torn seats and dirty, battered walls to an odd sort of antisepticness.
The train started away, creaking loudly. Plissken and Taylor grabbed seat frames to bolster them against the acceleration. Snake smiled as the speed built. They were off.
“We wired in to Seattle?” he asked.
Taylor twisted up his mouth. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe Seattle, maybe San Francisco, maybe Barstow.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t tell, you know? Those goddamn circuits are so small.”
Plissken tossed his satchel to Taylor and slumped down in a seat, his eyes drifting to the window, exhaustion spreading over his body like a shroud over a corpse. When he looked back around, Taylor was zipping open the bag.
“Congratulations,” Plissken said. “You’re a billionaire.”
Taylor was pulling plastic white credit cards out of the sack. “Jesus, Snake.” He began reading out loud, “Master, US National Bank. Master, US Port Authority. Master, US Tobacco Reserve.” He shoved the open satchel toward Plissken. “Will you look at this?”
Plissken folded his hands and leaned way back in the seat “You look at it I’m tired.”
“Come on, man. We gotta split it up.”
“I trust you.”
He watched as Taylor unzipped the other bag and started shoveling the credit discs into it. Then he closed his eyes and fell asleep. He dreamed about his head being on fire. Orange fire. Just like every night.
He awoke to Taylor shaking him gently on the arm. “Wake up, Snake. We’re there.”
Plissken came awake at once, alert, like an animal. He sat up straight, eye searching, brain clear-except for the pain.
His first word was, “What?”
Taylor had backed away from him. He had been around Plissken long enough to know that sometimes the Snake came awake defensively, violently. It had to do with his eye.
“The train’s slowing down, Lieutenant. We’re there.”
“Where?”
“Wherever.”
Plissken stretched quickly and watched them slowing to the terminal platform. All terminals looked the same. There was no way of telling where they were just from looking.
He stood when the train came to a complete stop. Taylor was already standing by the door. It slid open.
“Welcome to San Francisco,” the computer voice said. “Please step to your right”
Good citizens, Plissken and Taylor stepped out of the car and walked casually toward the escalators on their right
“Well, it ain’t Seattle,” Taylor frowned. “But it’s close.”
“Close enough for government work,” Plissken said.
Taylor thought about that for a moment, then a big toothy grin consumed his drawn face. “San Francisco ain’t bad,” he said. “I can spend a billion here.”
They got on the escalator and took the ride.
“San Francisco,” Taylor said again, shaking his head. “Sure couldn’t spend it in Barstow.”
“Yeah,” Plissken responded, but he wasn’t really listening. He was feeling the hairs on the back of his neck bristling. It felt bad. It felt all wrong. He began craning his head around as the moving stairs neared the upper lobby, trying to reassure himself.
“What’s wrong?” Taylor asked.
Plissken shook his head, lips tight “Something…” he started, then trailed off.
They got off the escalator. The lobby was totally deserted, not anything like the main lobby in the Atlanta terminal. There wasn’t even any Security here. They started walking across it, Plissken still glancing around.
Taylor slapped him on the shoulder. “Take it easy, Snake,” he said. “It’s four in the morning, man. Stop worrying. We made it.”
Plissken had about a second to appreciate the wisdom of that remark before the air exploded around them. There were sounds of automatic rifle fire, then Taylor spun off screaming, going for the floor which was coming apart in chunks around them.
Plissken went down with him, holding him. The man’s left arm had been chewed to pieces. He lay there, cursing through clenched teeth, his fatigue jacket already dyed red, blood-soaked, dripping in an evergrowing pool on the cement floor.
“God, Snake,” he rasped. “God… DAMN!”
Plissken tried to pull him to his feet. “Come on!” He looked across to the far side escalators. Blackbellies were spread across the escalator bank one floor up and were coming down. Kevlarred killers, crazies with badges. They carried AR-15s, up and ready. Black riot helmets with darkened visors covered their heads. The devil in black times six.
“Come on!”
He got the man onto his feet, but Taylor was already in bad shape. When he looked at Plissken, there was resignation in his face, resignation that hadn’t been there even in Leningrad.
They ran back the way they had come, and the guns started chattering again behind them. Taylor fell behind, blood loss and the bum leg taking their toll.
Plissken bounded down the escalator, and started eating up the platform in great leaping strides. He turned once to make sure that Taylor was all right. The little man was nowhere to be seen.
He slowed, then stopped. He looked back for Taylor, then turned to stare down the
long platform that could mean escape.
He turned back. “Taylor!” he called. “Taylor!”
Taylor wasn’t coming, he knew that. He also knew that there was nothing he could do about it. Turning, he looked once more down the length of the platform. His instincts told him to run. But Taylor was all he had left. They were all gone, everyone else who knew Snake Plissken as a real human being. All dead.
He sighed once, then trotted back to the escalators and up. He reached the top. Taylor was on his belly on the floor, crawling, leaving a bloody trail behind him like a snail’s. The blackbellies, rifles ready, moved slowly in on him. They were drawing it out, teasing, giving him that last look at daylight.
Plissken felt his stomach muscles tighten. He hated blackbellies, hated the stench of death that rolled off them like fog off the marshes. He dropped his satchel on the floor and raised his hands.
Rifles came up to cover him. “Drop the bag, Taylor,” he said.
The man looked up, tore into him with pleading eyes. He clutched the now bloody satchel tighter and kept moving, sliding through his own gore. “Go on, Lieutenant,” he rasped, and his voice was like an old man’s. “Go on.”
Plissken’s eyes jumped back and forth between Taylor and the blackbellies. He could see them vibrating, smelling the blood and wanting more. He spoke slowly, nonthreatening, emphasizing each word. “Drop the bag, Taylor.”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but the words never came. One of the gunmen opened fire on the little man, and the others started in right after. Taylor’s body jumped and twitched the death dance as the troopers, one by one, emptied their rifles into him. It was quite a show. They were all very pleased.
Plissken just stared as they moved in to grab him. When Taylor died, he took a good chunk of Snake Plissken with him. He was all alone then, and for once, the grief was enough to push the pain out of his head.
They grabbed him, jerking his arms roughly behind his back to shackle him. He didn’t mind the pain, though. There were worse things.
III
MANHATTAN ISLAND
October 23
7:30 P.M.
Bob Hauk let the sound of the copter blades mesmerize him as he stared out through the bubble at the churning black waters of the Hudson below.
It was going to rain; the air just reeked of it, but Meteorology told them that there was no gas in these clouds. They said that it would be a clean rain. The people at Meteorology were notorious liars.
They used to call him Big Bob when he was in the service. But that was a long time ago, back when there had been a spark within him. Back before the craziness. Now they just called him Hauk, and it was just the way he should be called.
He had once been a leader of men, a lover of people and a believer in ideals. Now he presided over the largest asylum in the history of the world. Now he sat in a chair and put his time in, counting off the days until he died. It was as worthwhile an occupation as he could think of. He had been hard once, hard and lean. But that was all decaying slowly to fat. His eyes were still commanding, though. He hadn’t lost that. They were ice blue and as direct as armor-piercing shells.
The radio squawked beside him, and he jerked his head to stare at it. The pilot reached out and juiced it. “Yeah,” he said.
“Gotham 4. This is Control. Do you read? Over.”
“Got you covered. Control. Go ahead. Over.”
Hauk continued to stare at the radio, almost as if it were a living thing talking to him there in the pale red light of the instruments. He shook his head and turned back to the window. Maybe the gas was affecting him, too.
“We have a radar blip in North Bay, section seventeen. Object moving toward the Jersey Wall. Can you check it out? Over.”
“Negative, Control,” the pilot said in a monotone. He wore his black helmet with the visor up to reveal his face. The tiny microphone bent around the side of the helmet, right up to his mouth. “I have Commissioner Hauk on board, and we are enroute to Headquarters.”
Hauk raised his hand without turning from the window and waved that off.
“Control. This is Gotham 4 again,” the pilot said, and he had an edge of excitement to his voice that made Hauk’s stomach turn. “The Commissioner gave me the go ahead. I am in pursuit of the bogey. Over.”
The chopper tilted forty-five degrees to curl back toward the city and for several seconds, Hauk found himself staring into the heart of the low-hanging cloud bank that the liars in Meteorology said contained no gas. Then they leveled off and came in at skyscraper level over the remnants of the west side elevated near Battery Park.
It had once been called New York City but that, like Hauk’s fortitude, had been before the craziness. Now it was the New York Maximum Security Penitentiary and it held three million killers, cutthroats, thieves and lunatics.
And Bob Hauk, God help him, was in charge.
He let his eyes drift over the corpse of the city. It was a blackened shell, a concrete forest of dead, towering trees. Its lifeless towers stretched like monstrous tombstones into the heart of the black night. Occasional fires flickered below him; the animals who now controlled those dead streets were playing out the disease that ruled their minds. But soon it would be winter, and the animals would grow a lot fewer in number. Hauk figured that couldn’t help but be a good thing.
New York City had been the first North American target in the war. It was under siege for three full weeks with fire bombs and gas. When it was over, those who were left alive were crazy. They roamed the streets in large packs, desecrating and cannibalizing what bodies they found. What remains there were got piled in layers up and down Wall Street, and that section of town became known as the boneyard,
Hauk looked over at his pilot. The man was staring intently at his small radar screen, his jaw muscles clenching and unclenching in anticipation. All at once, a tiny light appeared on the screen, flashing brightly each time the sweep passed its position.
“All right,” the pilot sighed, low and sexual. He started breathing heavily, his tongue flicking out to lick dry lips.
Hauk turned away from the man, staring once more at the city. He hated to look at it, hated everything about it. He hated the fates that put him there to begin with.
The war went on, and so did the gas. As the years slipped by, the American economy went to pieces. There were a lot of poor people, who were going crazy with gas madness. To survive they turned to crime. The crime rate doubled, then redoubled and quadrupled as crazies took to the streets, looting and burning-destroying everything that they came in contact with.
And as the wars continued overseas, the soldiers slowly went crazy. The Army, though, had learned to channel the insanity into battle fury. The trouble was, the boys were starting to come home after years on the front with no way to direct their madness.
Then someone had a bright idea. The United States Police Force was formed, its ranks filled exclusively with veterans with a taste for blood. Their uniforms were black, just like their minds. Their justice was swift and fiery.
They took to the streets, trained to mayhem, and fought the urban wars with clipped military precision. When they were done, millions lay dead. Those unlucky enough to be left alive were herded onto Manhattan Island. It was big enough, and uninhabited by anyone sane, and its rivers formed a natural barricade.
They were back over the churning waters again. The pilot was chuckling low. He had the blip centered on his radar screen.
He spoke into his mouthpiece. “North Bay, section seventeen. Object ahead.”
Hauk, from reflex, began looking down, his keen eyes scanning the surface. The copter dipped and began circling, the spiral getting lower and lower, threading the needle.
The pilot flipped on a spot. It stabbed the blackness with an eerie blue shaft of light. Hauk caught sight of the thing on the water before the pilot, but he didn’t say anything. It didn’t matter.
The searchlight found the object soon enough. It was a crude raft of r
ot wood and telephone poles lashed together. Two thin, tattered prisoners were atop it. They were paddling desperately toward the Jersey Wall. They looked up, startled, when the light found them. But then they went back to their paddling, hurrying the pace even faster.
The pilot’s gloved hand found the toggle for the backfires, and he gently caressed the little knob.
“Got you now,” he said huskily. “Dead meat.”
Hauk reached out and touched the hand on the toggle. The man looked over at him. His face was lined with anger. Hauk gave the look right back to him.
“A warning,” Hauk said. “Give them a warning first”
The man tightened his lips, but didn’t say anything. Moving his hand away from the missiles, he activated the loudspeakers instead.
“You have ten seconds to turn around,” he said, and the words roared out of the external speakers like thunder. “Start back to the penitentiary.”
The prisoners didn’t listen, of course. Hauk knew they wouldn’t. They were crazy anyway.
The pilot put his hand back on the toggle, then looked to Hauk. The Commissioner took a breath, then nodded. The grin came back to the man’s face immediately. He was easy to please. Just give him something to kill.
He got the raft directly below the chopper, then flicked the toggle. There was a whoosh and the copter shuddered. Hauk watched the tracers from the two missiles zig-zag down to the water.
The explosions ripped the night to shreds, ripped away the cover of darkness to reveal the festering heat beneath. When the white hot flashes faded away there was nothing left of the two men and the raft except churning, crackling water.
“Good shooting,” Hauk said without conviction.
The pilot bobbed his head proudly and turned the copter toward Liberty Island. “Control,” he said into his mouthpiece, trying to make his voice sound casual. “Attempted prisoner break has been terminated. Over.”