Then Came War

by Jacqueline Druga

  “Ignore it,” Harry told him. “We’re in an old tunnel.”

  No one thought much about the tunnel at all. The fact that it was dark was expected, but no one seemed surprised that there was no sound, not a single sound except for their footsteps.

  Then the one rat turned into several, then dozens and that was when they took notice.

  The light in the distance was small but it was a goal for them. But as they drew closer to the destination, the frequency and intensity of dead rats increased.

  Harry knew right away that something was wrong. “Foster, bring me that light.”

  Foster did.

  Harry crouched down and illuminated the rat. “What in heaven’s name?”

  Ben crouched down, as well. “They all look alike.”

  “Yeah,” Harry said. “Never seen anything like it.”

  “Were they poisoned?”

  “City ain’t wasting their time on cleaning up the sewer rats, not yet. They were all running here from somewhere.” Harry moved the light. “The little ones, those that were faster, made it farther before they died. These bigger ones didn’t get as far.”

  While some rats were on their sides, some were on their backs and they all had an arched body appearance, as if they had contorted in death. Their arms and legs were reaching out, their mouths wide open and each rat had a pool of blood around its head.

  “Something bigger happened,” Harry spoke low, placed his hand on Ben’s shoulder and used him as leverage to stand.

  “Like what you were saying before? Like an event?”

  Harry nodded.

  “You think there was a gas attack or a chemical attack?”

  Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. I do think we need to haul ass out of this tunnel in case whatever killed these rats is still lingering.”

  “Good idea,” Ben said. “You okay to pick up the pace?”

  “Walking to get out is one thing, running to save my life is something else. I can do it.”

  “Good.” Ben turned and raised his voice for the benefit of the group. “Hey everyone, we need to pick up the pace. Move as fast as we can. In fact, if you can, put your shirt over your nose and mouth.”

  Tyler spoke in a muffled voice, his shirt over his nose. “I did that already; it smells.”

  “Foster, set the pace,” Ben instructed.

  “You got it.” Foster retrieved the light from Harry, peered down at the rats and started moving.

  Abby walked alongside a woman named Monica. Neither of them said much as they held their shirts tightly over their noses and mouths. They moved at the pace Foster set but it was starting to get uncomfortable and tiring.

  But worse than that, with each step Abby could feel the crush and squish of the dead rodents beneath her feet. There was no getting used to it at all. She shuddered inside, wanting to gag, knowing exactly what the feeling was.

  But she trudged on. It wasn’t much farther. The tunnel had started to lighten, which wasn’t all that much of a good thing because she could actually see the rats more clearly.

  “What killed them?” Lana asked as she walked alongside Ben.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Harry thinks something big happened above. Do you?”

  “I’m starting to think that. I mean . . . where are the trains? Where’s the noise? Yeah, we’re in the old tunnels, but still, we should hear something.”

  “I know. It could be a terror attack on the railways. You know how many people they can affect by doing that.”

  “Hasn’t that been dinner conversation one too many times,” Ben said.

  “Oh God,” Lana moaned.

  “What?”

  “I stepped on another one. I’m trying not to, but I can’t help it.”

  “Just try not to think about it.” Ben stopped and faced her. “Lana, there is something I do need you to think about.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What we may face. If it was a railway hit or something right above, there may not be rescue workers cheering for us when we emerge. Okay? But it could be bad.”

  Lana nodded. “After looking at those rats, I really am preparing for anything.”

  Foster released an enthusiastic, “We made it!” and picked up his pace. “There’s a ladder that we can use to climb to the ledge. But be care …” he said as he ran. “There’s a…” his voice trailed off and the last word dropped to a whisper, “Train.”

  “What was that?” Harry asked.

  “There’s a train on the tracks,” Foster said. But he figured it wouldn’t be long before everyone saw that the train wasn’t moving. In fact, it was dark. The entire platform was darker, lit only by emergency lighting.

  Foster waited at the rungs.

  “Go on,” Harry said, bent over some catching his breath. “You go first.”

  Abby spoke up, “It’s awfully quiet. They must have evacuated the station.”

  “Go on.” Harry nudged Foster. “I want to get up there too.”

  “Okay.” Foster had a bad feeling, he really did. In fact there was a weird smell that permeated the air and grew stronger with each step he took. He climbed the rungs and closed his eyes as he reached the platform. Because he knew what he was going to find.

  His throat seemed to close and his heart dropped to his stomach. Suddenly, he was slammed with emotions that he couldn’t decipher. The sight left him unable to breathe. “Oh, God,” he cried. “Oh, my God.”

  His hand shot to his mouth. He knew he was going to vomit and he tried with everything he had to keep it in. “Don’t … don’t …” he was trying to say not to let Tyler up on the platform, but instead of words, vomit shot from his mouth.

  His regurgitation was over fast because he hadn’t eaten much and, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Foster turned, looking left and to right. The platform seemed to spin around him.

  It was a nightmare. It had to be. It felt surreal.

  Everywhere he looked there were people.

  Whatever had happened, it had to have happened during rush hour because there were so many people on that platform. Men, women and children were lying everywhere.

  Foster’s mouth stayed open as every face seemed to zoom into him.

  There was a woman whose eyes had bled and her eyeballs were nearly out of their sockets. Blood encircled her head and, just like the rats, her face was sunken in, mouth wide open and she had a horrendous look of agony on her face.

  Her body was curled as if she had died in the middle of convulsions.

  In fact, everyone looked the same.

  How long had Foster stood there, staring at it all in total shock? A minute, maybe less was all before a deep blood curdling scream snapped him out of it and he spun around to see Monica holding her mouth.

  Abby emerged next, gasped in horror and then repeated Foster’s reactions and immediately threw up. Then the two other men came up.

  Their reactions were the same.

  Foster flew to the platform.

  He was out of breath and peered down as Harry was helping Tyler climb. “Don’t let him up here. Someone cover his eyes. Please, cover his eyes.”

  Harry asked, “What … what happened?”

  Foster began to cry. His shoulders bounced with his sobs and he could barely talk. “They’re all dead.”

  Lana backed up.

  Ben’s eyes focused on Harry and Tyler.

  Tyler looked so confused.

  Ben turned Tyler from the ladder and braced his shoulders. “Look, I know you’re a big guy, if Foster says it’s bad, it might be too bad for you to see. How about I hold ya, you bury your head on my shoulder and I run us out of here?”

  Tyler nodded.

  “But first I need you to get up that ladder. You climb and when you get to the top, close your eyes tight, then turn around and face me. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Tyler nodded, his lips quivering.

  “Now you go.”

  Harry stood by the ladder. “How
bad is it?”

  “My stomach wasn’t strong enough,” Foster replied. He stared down waiting on Tyler.

  Ben was behind him.

  Lana inched into Harry. “I don’t want to do this.”

  “Just … just look ahead and don’t look around.” Harry instructed. “That’s all I can tell you. That’s what I’m going to do.”

  Tyler’s eyes were closed tight. He could smell something really bad, but he was afraid to even look. If the grownups were scared, then he was too.

  With Foster’s help he reached the level and turned around as Ben had instructed.

  No sooner had he opened his eyes than Ben was rising from the ladder.

  No amount of tears or warning prepared Ben for what he saw the moment he emerged eye level on that platform.

  The magnitude of death before him was more than he even imagined.

  He scooped Tyler up into his arms, held tight to the back of Tyler’s head and darted across the platform to the escalators. It was like a maze. He couldn’t run; he had to nearly tiptoe. It was worse than the rats. People took up every square inch, bodies over lapping.

  But unlike the rats, Ben couldn’t bring himself to step on a body. He nearly tripped several times.

  He arrived at the escalators which were not moving.

  There was a pile of people at the bottom; they had apparently just fallen backwards. People hung over the railing and lay on the escalator steps.

  He took the stairs instead; there was a lot less carnage there.

  Surfacing topside to the main terminal, it wasn’t any better. There were just as many, if not more, bodies there.

  Ben tried not to look, but he couldn’t help it.

  None of them looked as if they had just dropped dead in the middle of what they were doing. Every person appeared to have been running or trying to get somewhere. Their faces all held looks of horror, as if they all had struggled for their lives.

  Ben sought the salvation of the front doors. He could see the sunlight.

  Out there it had to be better. Outside there had to be help, he thought. With Tyler in his arms he ran to the doors. But he didn’t have to open them; there wasn’t any glass, none at all.

  Ben stepped through and the sunlight blinded him as if he had been in a dark movie theater.

  He kept blinking to adjust. But one thing he knew for certain, there were no more sounds outside than there were in the tunnel. No cars, no birds, no horns or people. He didn’t have to see anymore to know something was very wrong.

  When Ben’s eyesight finally adjusted to the light, Ben wished he couldn’t see.

  ***

  Lana didn’t need help getting across the platform to the stairs, but she stayed close to Harry, directly against his back, hiding her face against him to keep from seeing. It was just like what she used to do with Ben when they were younger and would go to those haunted houses.

  Harry was quiet as he trudged forward.

  Was he scared she wondered? He didn’t say a word. Not a word.

  There were three other men there, but Abby stuck close to Foster. The woman, Monica, was hysterical and needed help from others to even move.

  Yes, she had vomited, that was Abby’s initial reaction, but she felt calm. It actually scared her how calm she felt. Had life made her so numb that nothing fazed her? Not even the massive amount of death around her?

  By the time she reached the top level, there wasn’t anything she’d see that would surprise her. Or so she thought.

  She believed that until she stepped outside.

  Harry stopped about fifteen feet from the doors.

  “What is it?” Lana asked.

  “The sun is gonna be bright. You might want to shield your eyes.”

  Lana nodded. “Harry, what do you think we’ll see out there?”

  “Do you want my honest opinion?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Can you see your husband out there? He’s a shadow.”

  “Yes.”

  “What is he doing?” Harry asked. “He’s sitting down on the ground holding Tyler. At least that’s what it looks like.”

  “Oh my God, it’s worse out there then.”

  Harry only gave her a knowing look.

  “Do I even want to go out there?”

  “Do you have a choice?”

  Lana shook her head.

  Harry held out his hand. “Take it. It’s just as hard for me as it is for you.”

  Lana laid her hand in his and Harry gripped it.

  Together they walked outside to see what everyone else had already witnessed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  If a person kept their eyes straight ahead, Harry supposed everything looked normal. But shift them an inch and clearly life as they knew it, at least in New York, was different.

  “Let the child see,” Harry told Ben. “He doesn’t have a choice anymore.”

  Ben slowly turned Tyler from him, whispering that it would be okay. Tyler looked around.

  “What happened? I don’t understand.” Tyler said. “Did the terrorists get us?”

  “I think,” Harry walked to him and pulled him close. “I think this may be a bit more than terrorists.”

  They had emerged in front of Madison Square Garden. Cars were everywhere, blocking the streets. Almost all of them had their doors open and people must have staggered out and died.

  Bodies overlapped everywhere; it was the train station spilled onto the sidewalks.

  A thick layer of broken glass, like a blanket of snow covered the streets.

  But the eerie part was the sky line.

  The smaller buildings, with the exception of broken windows, were unscathed. The taller ones were blackened on top and from where they stood they saw at least on divot in the skyline. It had happened between two skyscrapers.

  Chunks of the buildings were gone. The remains were blackened. The buildings were crumbling not smoking. It was as if hell had been unleashed and took a fiery bite out of the buildings.

  Breathless, Foster spoke, “Is this what nuclear war does?”

  Harry shook his head. “Nah, there’d be nothing left.”

  Foster chuckled sarcastically, “And this is better?”

  Harry just shook his head. They stood in the street like tourists taking it all in. But he knew they had to pause and sort things out and then figure out what they were going to do next.

  ***

  Because it was closed to the public, the group slipped into the Madison Square Garden where they saw only a minimal number of bodies.

  Ben had placed Tyler on top of one of the concession counters as he went behind it. “So we can rule out nuclear attack, obviously. And radiation didn’t do this to these people.” He grabbed a bag of chips and gave it to Tyler. He then handed him a bottle of juice.

  Lana added, “And this is obviously, like Harry said, bigger than a terrorist attack.”

  “Biological?” Abby asked. “Chemical.”

  “Could be chemical,” Harry said. “Biological weapons tend to generate illness, mass hysteria. Some people near the drop site may have gone all at once, but I don’t think everyone would have. Now a chemical agent … maybe it could cause what we saw.”

  “How would they disperse it all at once?” Abby asked.

  Harry fluttered his lips. “Maybe use a bomb. Again, thinking back to the cold war days, they did have missiles laced with chemical weapons. Whoever did this wanted the whole area wiped out at once.”

  From the back of the group, almost as if he were speaking to himself, a man named Brendan spoke up. “Thermobaric. It had to be some form of Thermo baric weaponry.”

  Everyone turned and looked at him. He was standing in the back eating from a bag of chips.

  “It wasn’t nuclear or anything like that. There are no flames. It was like the people were snuffed out,” he said. “A chunk of that building is gone. I heard explosions three of them.”

  “So did I,” Abby said.

  “Yeah,�
�� Brendan nodded. “So obviously there were at least three of those bombs. We just can’t see where the other ones hit. They would have to have hit New York with three in order to get it all. In fact, there may have been a fourth and we didn’t hear or maybe even more.” He shrugged. “Center, North, South and East.”

  Harry blinked a few times taking in what he had said. “Okay. You’re just rattling off. What the heck is that? It sounds familiar.”

  “Thermobaric,” Brendan said. “Small versions were used in the Iraqi war. Larger versions for cities such as New York were designed during the Cold war. Their purpose was to wipe out people and do minimal damage to structures and plant life. Not sure about the scientific angle, but they were designed to explode in the air, make some kind of pressure wave and somehow burn all the oxygen out of the air.”

  Ben released an “Ah’ and nodded. “ I heard about those. Bunker bombs.”

  “Yeah,” Brendan said. “Small ones are called that. Anyhow, theoretically anyone near the blast is incinerated. But for those who are at a distance, the air heats up so much it expands, creates a vacuum, the lungs rupture and living things like people suffocate. That’s why everyone’s eyes and ears were bleeding. That’s why their mouths were open and they all look like they were panicking.”

  Lana’s head dropped. “They suffered.”

  “Probably they suffered horrendously. The human rights people tried to have them banned,” Brendan added. “They say it doesn’t affect the brain so the victim is aware the whole time that they are dying. They called it inhumane. As if any other explosive isn’t. They all are inhumane.”

  Harry gave Brendan a quirky look. “How the heck do you know all this? Are you in the army?”

  Brendan shook his head. ‘No, they had a whole series about the weapons of the Cold War on the History Channel.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Harry said. “I always skipped those programs.”

  “This has to be bigger than New York,” Ben said. “If it were just New York, we’d hear helicopters looking for people. Someone hit the US and hit it big.”