by Jon Land
The arms of the two giants intertwined again, each grappling for the neck of the other, trying for a snap that would end the fight quickly. They spun, and Peet’s back slamming against the control panel deactivated the emergency button, causing the compartment to sail upward again.
Quail was big and strong but not patient, as Peet had learned to be. Peet held his own against the strength that was equal to his own, waiting for the opening he knew would come. Finally Quail went for a quick move up and under his outstretched hands which would have snapped Peet’s neck in an instant if he hadn’t been ready for it. The end result was to place him in an infinitely superior position. Using one of the Dutchman’s arms for leverage, he wrapped his other hand around Quail’s chin and began to pull them in opposite directions.
Peet felt all of Quail’s muscles tense against the force being applied to his chin, the twisting certain to snap the neck if the Dutchman let up in the slightest. He flailed and kicked, but Peet maneuvered him about so he couldn’t strike. In that moment it all came back to the bald giant, the feeling of tearing his victims’ heads from their shoulders back when the demons had run rampant through his being. That memory was enough to paint his mind with a vision, and the vision filled his thoughts as he continued to twist.
Quail tried for Peet’s eyes, but the bald giant kept twisting, spinning, throwing off Quail’s sense of timing. For the first time in the life that he could remember, the Dutchman saw his own death. The next spin cracked his side against the elevator wall, and he felt the detonator jockeying about in his baggy pocket.
The detonator! If he died here and now he would fail to achieve the ultimate climax of his life’s work. That he could not allow.
Peet felt the surge of strength an instant after Quail felt it. The Dutchman was suddenly scalding to the touch, and Peet imagined that if he gazed at his fingers the flesh would boil off them. Still he held fast until Quail twisted his upper body at an angle that seemed humanly impossible. He realized his grip was sliding off in time to reverse his direction before Quail’s deadly blow could find him. The Dutchman missed, and a portion of the elevator’s wall bent inward. Peet tried for him again, but Quail ducked under his outstretched arms. Peet felt his skull being rammed hard against the wall once, twice; felt himself slumping to the compartment floor as the doors slid open on the eightieth floor and the Flying Dutchman bolted for the stairs that would take him the final six stories to the observation deck.
The trash barge’s diesel engine roared like a dragon and continued to belch gray smoke. It ran the length of two subway cars and was coal-black from stem to stern. In fact, the beast had the look of a huge, elongated mouth that was all muscle, jaw, and teeth. Its front grille was composed of a steel alloy that could push anything in its path without giving, a feature that gave it the appearance of a gentle scowl not unlike the one made famous by comic Oliver Hardy during his infamous battles with his sidekick Stan Laurel. Add to this the grille’s curvature, which looked very much like a mustache, and the name “Ollie” indeed looked fitting stenciled across the barge’s side.
O’Brien led Kimberlain to the cab, where the driver was more than happy to relinquish his seat.
“Ever drive anything like this before?” he asked the Ferryman. And when Kimberlain said he hadn’t, the driver proceeded to provide a two-minute course in how to manipulate the various levers and gears to shift Ollie at the proper time and stop him when the need arose. “You’ll feel yourself slow down when you pick up the trains in front of you, but Ollie’ll pick up speed again real quick so long as you …”
The Ferryman followed it all as best he could and climbed into the seat.
O’Brien leaned in after him. “Sure you don’t want me to come along?”
“I work better alone.”
O’Brien nodded reluctantly. “Well, after you pass through the Wall Street station, the East River tunnel comes up real fast. It’s just over a half mile in length, so if you hit it at twenty miles per hour you’re looking at less than a two-minute trip tops. Want to start easing off the gas real quick to make sure those cars don’t push themselves across to Brooklyn.” The transit engineer backed away. “Good luck, pal.”
Kimberlain’s watch read 10:39 as he eased Ollie forward.
The cold came with the men through the door. It seemed to Danielle that they had dragged the storm in with them as she dove downward and stripped her pistol free. A trio of white-clad, ice-encrusted gunmen were charging forward. Her dive carried her over Farraday to where she could shield him as she pounded out three shots from her pistol, the only three she would get before the mechanism jammed from its prolonged exposure to cold.
She saw one of the gunmen go down and the other two struggle to fasten fresh clips. Danielle rose to surprise them with a rush of her own, using the butt of her pistol like a hammer on the forehead of the first she reached while the second abandoned his rifle in the close confines in favor of a knife. His first slash made a neat slice across her stomach. Danielle screamed from rage and pain and counterattacked furiously, locking a hand on the wrist with the knife and using her booted feet against the man’s knees.
She felt one of them buckle as he gasped, and twisted to better her position. She saw the man she had downed with the pistol butt struggle to his knees with blood gushing down the center of his face. Blindly he felt about on the floor for his freshly loaded rifle. Danielle tried to kick it away from him, but in so doing the man she was grappling with tore his knife free and sent it plunging toward her rib cage. She managed to deflect it, but by then the second man had recovered his gun and was bringing it up for a clear shot. She was powerless to do anything.
Suddenly the figure of Farraday, muscular above the waist but withered beneath it, threw himself atop the gunman from behind. The maneuver forced him to the floor, where they were reasonable equals, Farraday using his upper-body strength to gain the advantage. In the same instant Danielle deflected the knife blade a second time and managed to gain control of it. She jammed both hands onto its hilt and turned its force back into the man’s gut. He stiffened and fell, frozen as the wind whipped through the open section of the station and gunfire continued above.
Danielle started to drop when another figure managed to rush through the door, gun blazing. Farraday grabbed the fallen man’s rifle and pounded the new intruder with its fire as a second door at the opposite end of the corridor exploded and more Hashi entered.
The nearest staircase was just behind them. Danielle started for it and helped Farraday along, tossing his arm around her shoulder so she could drag him. The stairs came hard, the commander’s legs thumping up one at a time. Above them they could hear the containing fire of the Marines, who were determined to halt the rush of more of the enemy into the complex. For his part, Farraday was struggling with his free hand to steady his walkie-talkie at his lips.
“Pull back!” he screamed to whoever was listening. “Pull back and barricade all doors.”
They might succeed in denying access to the outpost through any entrance except the front, but that was all the Hashi needed. Danielle and Farraday reached the top of the second staircase and passed through a door onto the third floor. She eased him gently down and took his keys to lock it behind them. Knowing the invaders possessed explosives, she knew that neither this lock nor any other would hold the Hashi back once the Marines’ fire from somewhere on this floor failed to keep them pinned outside.
“Christ,” Farraday moaned. “They’ll be everywhere.”
“No,” she countered. “There aren’t enough left. One more assault is all they’ve got left in them, and it won’t come until they’re absolutely sure of success.”
She helped Farraday toward the rec room that he had ordered many of the occupants of Outpost 10 to seek refuge in. She opened the door and looked inside. The room was empty.
“They must have pulled back farther when the shooting started,” Farraday realized as more of the Marines’ gunfire sounded.
A door crash
ed open at the other end of the corridor and the Marine sergeant, bleeding badly from a head wound, lunged forward with rifle ready.
“Sorry, sir. I thought you were—”
“Yes. How bad you hurt, Sergeant?”
“I’ll get by.”
“Where are the people?”
“Sent them as far back as they could go, sir. Sent them to the pump room.”
“I’ve got one man left keeping the rest of the bastards pinned outside,” the sergeant explained. “We’ve got position on them, but our ammo’s down.”
“Pinned outside,” Danielle echoed. “How many?”
“I counted ten.”
“What about inside the complex?”
He shook his head. “None other than the ones you must’ve taken care of. They’ve backed off. They know we’re low.”
Danielle knew the installation would be theirs to take once the two surviving Marines’ bullets ran out. A thought suddenly struck her.
“Commander, the hoses we used to form ice over the oil pit, where do they run from?”
Farraday looked up at her, confused. “The pump room. We ran them through ventilation shafts.”
Danielle’s mind was working frantically. “Sergeant, can you and your men hold out for another fifteen minutes?”
“Give it a damn good try, ma’am.”
“What about us?” Farraday wondered.
“We’re going to the pump room,” Danielle told him.
Kimberlain was coming fast toward Wall Street at 10:49. Fourteen minutes remained until detonation, and Ollie had behaved brilliantly through the entire trip. The toughest moments came when impact with the second stalled train at Christopher Street had slowed Ollie to a crawl he seemed powerless to lift himself from. The Ferryman fought against panic and shifted up and down until the trash barge gathered itself for the last leg of its journey and the final train, which stood in its way at Fulton Street beneath the famed fish market.
Kimberlain knew better than anyone the difficulty of his plight. He could shove the explosive-laden cars into the East River tunnel, only to be drowned in the backlash of water if he didn’t give himself enough time to flee. With a full fourteen minutes to go before detonation and only two more stations before the tunnel, that didn’t seem a problem. He was going to make it with time to spare as long as little time was lost when he reached the stalled train beneath Fulton Street.
Ollie was rolling fast by the time the convoy surged around a bend at Chambers Street and sped toward the Park Place station. Fulton Street was next, around yet another bend, and playing it safe, Kimberlain started to ease onto the brake to avoid the kind of collision that could cause derailment. Ollie’s speed dropped, but not fast enough. The final stalled train was perched precariously partway into the curve and partway on the straightaway that led into the East River tunnel. The impact shook Ollie backward, and the grinding pressure on the barge’s gears forced it to stall. Kimberlain kept himself calm and moved his hand to the starter button. Nothing happened.
His thoughts began to race crazily. An explosion here would level the entire financial district in a blast that would shatter every window within a five-square-mile radius, shards of glass turned into deadly projectiles all the way to Central Park. He pressed the starter button again.
The engine ground, and wouldn’t kick over.
It was 10:51, and he was dead on the tracks.
After finishing his six-story climb to the observation deck on the Empire State Building’s 86th floor, Quail charged straight toward the west side and through a door leading outside onto the promenade, The winds howled up at him, and he struggled to lean over to find a view of the festivities far below. Construction equipment was everywhere in his way. The promenade was undergoing extensive renovations, and he could smell wood and sawdust. Many of the J-shaped bars, normally curling inward to form a safety railing atop the retaining wall, had been removed to allow easy access to the promenade from the scaffolding that had been erected four stories down the building on all sides.
The huge balloons alerted him to the Broadway parade site, and he focused down on the squeezed-together swell of humanity that would soon perish by his hand. From such a distance, they had no identity other than the faceless mass that they were, and when the screams came they would seem as one. Quail started to reach into his pocket for the detonator.
The shuffling of footsteps to his rear made him turn just in time to see the two-by-eight plank coming forward. He ducked but didn’t sink low enough to avoid all of Peet’s blow. The right side of his head flamed, then numbed. He was dazed but saw the next blow coming in time to twist out of the way, and Peet’s plank splintered on impact against the concrete retaining wall that stretched just past their waists.
The Dutchman reached over to his side and tore one of the J-shaped curls from a section of steel grating. He leaped back to his feet just as Peet grasped hold of a five-foot-long iron bar and faced off against him. Quail held his piece of grating like a giant scythe. It wasn’t razor sharp, of course, but it was finished in a tip that could slice through bone as easily as flesh. The two giants stalked each other around the narrow walkway running between the glassed-in observation deck and the retaining wall. The first corner brought both added depth and width for them to maneuver, and Peet seized the opportunity to launch an attack with his more cumbersome weapon.
The steel bar sizzled through the wind straight overhead at Quail. But the Dutchman deflected it with his scythelike piece of safety rail. The bar continued its momentum, and the cement beneath it fractured at the crash. Quail immediately followed up the move with a sideways swipe aimed for Peet’s throat. The strike was too low, though, and Peet was too fast. He backpedaled and twisted sideways, so the best Quail could manage was to slice through his clown costume. Blood oozed through the green fabric from the gash, but Peet felt no pain.
Quail came in overhead with his promised curl of death, and now it was Peet’s turn to block and retaliate. He met the scythe at one end of the steel bar and rotated the other down onto the Dutchman’s head. Quail bellowed and reeled, swiping at the air with his weapon to keep Peet from closing while he was stunned.
But Peet had already closed for the kill, and he might have had it if luck hadn’t proved to be on the Dutchman’s side. Quail banged hard against the concrete retaining wall, and the J-shaped curl dangled low by his side and nearly slipped from his grasp. With the blur of Peet nearly upon him, Quail was merely trying to regain his grip when his awkward motion drove the tip of the scythelike weapon into Peet’s thigh.
The pain and shock forced the bald giant backwards with over an inch of the curl’s steel tip still stuck down deep in his flesh. He stumbled into a workbench and lost his balance, finding himself gazing up at the sky as he felt for the handle of the curl to tear it from his leg. While still down and dazed, he was already considering the dart that would plunge it into Quail. But the Dutchman had the sense to realize that what he needed most was another weapon when something caught his eye halfway between him and Peet.
A circular saw, still plugged in.
With a scream that echoed through the upper stories of New York City, Peet had just torn the tip of the steel curl from his own flesh—blood, muscle, and sinew trailing behind—when the Dutchman lunged. His impact caught Peet by surprise, and his leg exploded in fresh agony as Quail toppled him back over the workbench. Peet felt for the scythelike thing, only to find he’d lost it at the same time the grinding noise split his eardrums.
His senses sharpened in time for him to thrust his arms up toward Quail as the Dutchman lowered the circular saw toward his neck. It spun in a rhythmic blur, smelling of wood and lubrication oil. Peet was able to lock both his arms on Quail’s descending wrists, but the Dutchman’s next violent push forced one of them onto his face instead. Peet felt the mask Quail wore for a face stick to his palm as he tried to force the head up and away. Quail’s neck muscles resisted the action and kept the whirling blade lowering
slowly toward Peet’s head.
It was close enough to tease his lips when Peet managed to rejoin his second hand to his first on the Dutchman’s wrists. Quail, mask half pulled off, glowered at him with eyes straight from hell. Peet looked into those eyes and saw the part of himself discarded three years before, and he knew it would continue to live on unless he was victorious here today.
The saw began rising, the muscles of both giants throbbing and trembling from the strain. Peet tried to position his legs to kick at the Dutchman, but his position remained too precarious and Quail’s saw too close to chance it. But the saw was electric, which meant there must be a cord, and his eyes found part of it running between the Dutchman’s legs. If he could swing one of his feet far enough to loop his toes around it, he might be able to tear the plug from its socket.
Peet arched his back to better position himself, giving ground in the process, which brought the blade back down to less than an inch from his chin. Hearing its whirl, he felt the toes of his clown shoe close around the cord. Damn things had been lousy for running but were flexible enough to curl around the rubber. He yanked with his leg as hard as he could and felt the cord come free.
The saw stopped instantly. Quail registered that just as he registered Peet springing up in the same instant. The Dutchman let the saw go and lunged at him. But Peet still held the saw cord, and now he quickly brought it up and around Quail’s throat. The Dutchman fought sideways, but by then Peet had wrapped the tough rubber around his flesh, pulling with all his strength. He felt Quail’s bulging neck muscles contract under the pressure and knew he’d cut off the Dutchman’s air. Still the Dutchman managed to flail and stagger toward the concrete retaining wall, which stretched just above his waist. Peet yanked harder, until at last Quail began to sink to his knees, an awful gurgling sound coming from deep in his throat. Peet felt the end near now, felt his greatest rival growing limp, felt him dying, and leaned slightly over to better finish the job.
With that, Quail snapped back to life. The illusion abandoned, he reached behind him to the poorly balanced Peet, grabbed hold of his baggy clown shirt, and yanked it hard enough to bring the bald giant up and over him. Peet flew over the building’s edge, and the force of the projection carried him beyond even the scaffolding into the open air to a fall eighty-six stories below. There was no scream, not a sound. He just vanished into the void of blowing air.