A Hole in the Sky

by William C. Dietz

  A frayed banner, with the words “GIGANTIC SALE” emblazoned across it, hung from the building next to it. And a barely visible flagpole could be seen jutting out from the second floor of the high-rise on the opposite side of the street. “There it is,” he said. “At two o’clock.”

  Kawecki turned slightly and made a minute adjustment to his glasses. “Check! There’s Old Glory! Right where she’s supposed to be. It looks like Lucy is still alive. Thank God for that.”

  Voss nodded. Like Kawecki, he had spoken with the agent named Lucy by radio, but never met her. And that was before they left Arkansas some three months earlier. A lot can happen in ninety days. “If you’re ready, let’s go. We’re supposed to meet her at the Hotel Constantine. My guess is that she’s watching us from one of those buildings.”

  “Roger that,” Kawecki said, as he fastened his binoculars into place. “All right, everybody, let’s move out. And don’t forget to eyeball the windows all around. A stink with an Auger could do lots of damage from up there. Over.”

  Voss heard a crunching sound under his boots as he followed Lang and Kawecki across a field of fresh snow. He knew the stinks could follow and wondered if they would. How many humans remained in New York anyway? Enough to make tracks a common sight? Or were signs of habitation so rare as to merit an immediate follow-up? The politician didn’t know but figured he was about to find out.

  Lang must have been thinking about it too, because he made it a point to walk on bare concrete in the few places where that was possible, and cut through stores when it made sense. Fifteen minutes later they slipped through the front door of a run-down hostelry called the Constantine. It was a residential hotel from the look of it, which made sense given all the factories and warehouses in the area. An imposing reception desk stood off to the left, backed by a key rack, and a framed list of “House Rules.”

  Broken glass crackled under Rigg’s boots as he walked over to the reception desk and slapped the dome-shaped bell that sat next to a black telephone. It made a lonely ringing sound.

  Voss eyed the lobby’s worn chairs, the shoe-shine stand, and the magazine kiosk that was decorated with cigarette advertising. Taking a closer look, he saw that a two-year-old copy of Time magazine was still for sale. The cover photo consisted of an open-mouthed Steelhead. The caption read: “What do they want?”

  The answer, as it turned out, was everything.

  Voss’s thoughts were interrupted when Chu said, “We’ve got company,” and a woman walked in off the street. She was decked out in a fashionable fur hat, a pink ski jacket, and a bandolier of red shotgun shells. The rest of her outfit consisted of black stirrup pants and fur-trimmed boots. A Winchester pump gun was tucked under her right arm. She looked like a socialite on a skeet shoot. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Lucy. Welcome to the Big Apple. Which one of you is President Voss?”

  Voss stepped forward. The woman in front of him appeared to be in her early thirties. Blond curls peeked out from under the cap. Her wide-set eyes were China blue and her skin was alabaster white.

  Lucy was a beautiful woman, or had been back before something ripped her face open and left a jagged scar that started high on the right side of her face. The white line zigzagged down across a softly rounded cheek to the left corner of her mouth. The stitches looked like the work of an amateur. Voss could tell that she knew what he was thinking as her chin came up and her eyes narrowed. “I’m Tom Voss,” he replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for agreeing to help us.”

  “You’re the one who deserves thanks,” Lucy replied sincerely as her eyes darted from face to face. “Odds are that the stinks know you’re here by now, so it’s best to keep moving.”

  Lucy led the team out onto Canal Street, and from there to Varick, where they took a right. Voss would have felt very exposed if it hadn’t been for the snow. It was falling more thickly now, reducing visibility to little more than twenty feet, and erasing the team’s tracks within a matter of minutes.

  Warehouses crowded in all around as Varick merged with Broadway. A short time later the party turned left onto Chambers, where they passed a building that appeared to have been pulverized by a giant foot. Then it was time to stop and check their back trail. The lack of visibility cut both ways. If the Chimera couldn’t see the humans, the reverse was true as well.

  “Okay,” Lucy said, as she used a boot to scrape some snow aside. “See that manhole cover? If one of you big, strong men would be kind enough to lift it up I would appreciate it. You’ll have to remove your packs in order to drop through, however.”

  It took the better part of ten minutes to lift the cover out of the way, send two men down the steel ladder, and drop the packs through the hole. Then, once the rest of the party was safely belowground, it was Mason’s job to ease the metal lid back into position. With that accomplished, it was time to gear up again.

  Lucy was holding a flare. The light threw black shadows up onto curved walls. “We’re in a storm drain,” she informed them as the men shouldered their packs. “We use them to get around. The stinks know that, so they send hunter-killer teams down to look for us, but they pay a high price for doing so. Keep your eyes peeled and remember, pipes come in from every direction.”

  “And if we get into a fight, be careful where you aim,” Kawecki added. “We have enough problems without shooting each other.”

  Like the rest of the team, Voss was armed with two primary weapons. Given the situation, he thought it best to exchange the M5A2 carbine for a cut-down Rossmore stored in the scabbard strapped to his pack. With the shotgun at the ready he followed Lucy, Lang, and Kawecki out of the collector manifold and into a large pipe. They had to walk bent over, which not only was uncomfortable but would make it damned hard to fight if attacked.

  Lucy led them through a series of left- and right-hand turns. Voss tried to memorize the route but soon gave up. It was too damned complicated.

  A short time later, the team arrived at a point where explosives had been used to open a side passageway. The tunnel was about ten feet long. Heavy beams had been used to shore up the passageway, but the work had obviously been carried out by amateurs, so Voss had no desire to linger. Lucy directed the team into a subway tunnel. “We’re close,” she promised. “Now stay together. I wouldn’t want to lose anyone.”

  It was good advice, and Voss was careful to keep the interval between Kawecki and himself short as they followed a set of rusting tracks past a train and the empty platform beyond. Voss had been to New York on at least a dozen occasions back before the war. He wondered if he had stood at that very station, his mind focused on an upcoming meeting, blissfully unaware of what the future had in store.

  Suddenly Voss’s thoughts were jerked back to the present as Alvarez yelled a warning: “Drones!” Each of the beetle-shaped machines was equipped with a headlight, and the beams crisscrossed each other as a loud thrumming noise sounded and a swarm of at least twenty Drones swept in to attack the humans.

  Alvarez put a burst of projectiles into the lead machine and it exploded. The resulting flash of light strobed the tunnel as the rest of the team opened fire. The noise generated by automatic weapons and shotguns blended with the percussive boom of exploding Drones to produce a hellish cacophony of sound.

  Voss saw a bright light angling down at him, fired the Rossmore, and heard a metallic clang as the slugs struck. Instead of exploding, the badly damaged Drone kept coming, and crashed into his chest!

  The impact put Voss on his ass, and electricity crackled around the machine as it struggled to lift off. The Drone was about five feet off the ground and wobbling badly when Voss sat up. He fired the shotgun and felt a series of pinpricks as the machine exploded and small pieces of shrapnel hit him.

  “Nice one, Mr. President,” Lucy said, offering him a hand. “It looks like we have what we need. A leader who can shoot straight.”

  As Voss came to his feet, he saw that the battle was over. Drone carcasses littered the tr
acks. Some of them smoked and sputtered impotently as components shorted out.

  “What have we got?” Kawecki demanded. “Any casualties?”

  “Yeah,” Rigg said solemnly. “Mason took one in the ass.”

  “It snuck up behind me,” the big man said defensively. He had short hair, dark skin, and a moon-shaped face.

  Kawecki chuckled. “I’ll put you in for a medal. Okay, check your weapons, and let’s get going. Target practice is over.”

  After a ten-minute walk, the team arrived at a spot where a construction project had been under way. Lucy led the group back behind a pile of lumber to a point where three sheets of plywood were leaning against the wall. Once the sheets were lifted out of the way, a hole was revealed. “You’ll have to crawl on your hands and knees,” she commented. “But it’s okay to leave your packs on.”

  The woman led the way, and one by one the men followed her. Light flooded the tunnel, and when Voss stepped forward, he was completely unprepared for the sight that greeted him. Lucy saw the look on his face and nodded knowingly. “This station is located underneath the public area in front of City Hall. It was intended to be a showpiece when it opened in 1904. But passenger service was discontinued in 1945 and the station was sealed off later on. We use it as a gathering place, and one of our people is a damned good engineer. He tapped into the Chimeran power grid and restored the lights.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Voss said as he looked down the tunnel. The first decorative arch featured intricate tilework, the next boasted insets of colored glass, and brass chandeliers hung in between. The effect was stunning.

  “Come on,” Lucy said. “The rest of them are camped in the mezzanine.”

  As the team followed Lucy into the lobby-like mezzanine they saw that dozens of soldiers, ex-soldiers, and citizen freedom fighters had responded to the nationwide call. Some of them knew one or more members of the incoming team, so there were lots of raucous greetings, friendly insults, and man-hugs as old comrades were reunited.

  Kawecki, Mason, Rigg, and the rest were soon lost in the social melee. Voss was standing by himself when Lucy reappeared with a bespectacled man at her side.

  “President Voss? This is Doctor Fyodor Malikov. I understand that you two have been in frequent radio contact but have never met face-to-face. Doctor Malikov, this is President Thomas Voss.”

  “Tom is fine,” Voss said, as he shook the other man’s hand. His handshake was surprisingly strong for one who looked so frail. Judging from appearances, Malikov was in his late fifties or early sixties. He was mostly bald, with a halo of white hair and a full beard. His face was gaunt and his clothes were tattered.

  Voss knew Malikov had been forced to flee Europe for the United States after the Chimera broke out of Russia. He’d been instrumental in creating the serum that the Sentinels relied on and the new Hale vaccine as well. This vaccine could not only alleviate human suffering by making humans immune to the Chimeran virus, it could reduce the number of pod farms and the forms they produced.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person,” Malikov said. “How is the vaccine production going?”

  “We aren’t producing as many doses as we’d like,” Voss replied, “but it’s ramping up. And getting the vaccine out to the people takes a lot of effort, as you can imagine.”

  “I understand,” Malikov said. His eyes were bright. “Meanwhile ve must either shut the tower down or destroy it.”

  “And how is that going to work?” Lucy wanted to know.

  A long moment of silence passed as Malikov looked down, then up again. “I don’t know,” he confessed.

  “You don’t know?” Voss demanded incredulously. “We brought all of these people here to New York, and you don’t know?”

  “That’s the reality of the situation,” Malikov said defensively. “Vonce ve get inside, and fight our way up to the control room, I’ll figure it out.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  Malikov met Voss’s eyes. His gaze was unapologetic. “Then we’re going to die for nothing.”

  The attack on the tower was scheduled for 0830 the following morning, but for Kawecki and the rest of the soldiers the evening was a rare opportunity to get together in groups of five or six and shoot the shit. And whenever soldiers gather, talk inevitably turns to old battles and old buddies. So as Kawecki and some of the surviving Sentinels sat on their packs and passed a bottle of Jim Beam around, the subject of Joseph Capelli was bound to come up.

  “I say Capelli did the right thing,” a soldier named Budry said as he took a sip and wiped his mouth. “Hale hadn’t had an inhibitor treatment in a long time. The poor bastard was about to turn. Joe did him a favor.”

  “That’s bullshit,” Yorba replied bitterly. He had a head of unruly hair and a beard to match. “Hale was the best we had! And maybe Malikov could have saved him. Plus this is the U.S. Army, goddamn it! Or what’s left of it. Since when is it okay to shoot your commanding officer? No, I’d say Capelli got off easy. They should have put the SOB in front of a firing squad.”

  “How ’bout you, Captain?” a Sentinel named Russ inquired, as the bottle came his way. “Was Capelli right or wrong?”

  “The asshole was wrong,” Kawecki said darkly. “I fought alongside Hale and he was a fine officer. And, if I run into Capelli, I’ll blow his fucking brains out. Any further questions?”

  “No,” Russ said with a boyish grin. “I think that covers it.”

  “Good,” Kawecki said as he stood. “This meeting is adjourned. Go get some sleep. We have a whole bunch of stinks to kill in the morning.”

  It was July 4th, and Voss had been up all night. Not because he had to be, or wanted to be, but because he couldn’t sleep. Now the task that once seemed so achievable, and even glamorous, was beginning to look like a suicide mission. The tower was much larger than he had imagined it to be, and it was crawling with stinks. Worse yet, Malikov wasn’t sure of what to do if they made it to the control room. So, having allowed his visions of glory to get the better of him, Voss was going to die.

  But it was too late to change plans or back out. All Voss could do was shoulder his pack and follow a double column of soldiers up the Lexington Avenue Line towards the intersection of 42nd and Third. That was where the alien tower had grown to dwarf the Chrysler Building and touched the sky itself. A six-inch-thick Chimeran power conduit led the way.

  A scouting party had been sent ahead and reported everything was quiet so far. But that couldn’t last for long—and it didn’t.

  The battle began fifteen minutes later as they passed under 35th Street. The first sign of resistance came when three elongated Hunter Drones dropped out of a ventilation shaft and opened fire. The effort wasn’t enough to stop Voss’s team, so Voss assumed the machines were supposed to simply delay them.

  If so the tactic wasn’t very successful, because Kawecki had been expecting something of the sort and his men had two L210 LAARKs (Light Anti-Armor Rockets) prepped and ready to go. The Drones barely had time to open fire before they were destroyed in quick succession.

  The rocket launchers were a bit of overkill, but Kawecki figured the LAARKs wouldn’t be of much use inside the tower, and he wanted to hold casualties to a minimum going in. “That’s what I’m talking about,” one of the men said, as a still-smoking carcass clattered onto the tracks. “We’re kicking ass and taking names.”

  Once the party’s leaders arrived at the point where the tower’s metal roots blocked the tunnel, they climbed up onto the platform and took up positions around the stairs as the rest of the troops came up to join them. Over Voss’s objections, Alvarez, Mason, and Rigg had been assigned to guard Malikov and himself. So wherever they went the others followed.

  “Okay,” Kawecki said over the radio. “Let’s go upstairs and waste some stinks. Over.”

  With a shout of approval, the single-file column of soldiers surged up the stairs, past an empty ticket booth and into the tower itself.

  Voss heard
the battle before he had a chance to join in it, as the human invaders made violent contact with a force of snarling Hybrids. Heavy fire lashed back and forth, and Voss heard screaming as people began to fall.

  The politician had to negotiate his way around a half-dozen bodies as he and the rest of the soldiers pushed their way into a huge lobby. Voss tilted his head back to see a circular platform with thick supporting columns on both sides of it. A walkway spiraled up and away from the platform. It was connected side-to-side by a network of crisscrossing sky bridges.

  As Steelheads appeared on the platform above and fired Augers down into the crowd below, Lucy jerked spastically and went down. A soldier fell as Kawecki said, “Kill those bastards! Everyone else onto the elevators. Move!”

  Voss had seen the elevators too, three of them on each side of the lobby. He led Malikov, his bodyguards, and a dozen other soldiers over to one of the circular platforms. Mason slapped a control, curved doors slid into place, and the elevator began to rise.

  Malikov studied a brightly lit panel on the wall. “This symbol is for the control room,” the scientist said confidently, pointing at a star-shaped icon. “If ve stay on the elevator it will take us there. Tell the others.”

  At that moment the platform jerked to a halt and the doors opened. “Hold that thought,” Voss said. “It looks like the stinks shut the elevator system down.”

  That prediction soon came true, as all of the tubular lifts opened to spill their passengers out onto the circular platform Voss had seen from the lobby below. As the humans exited, they were immediately confronted by the stinks who were already on that level. More of them were charging down the spiral ramp from above as a swarm of Drones appeared.

  A hellish battle ensued. Wraith miniguns harvested the Chimera like wheat in a field, V7 Splicers chopped the stinks into chunks of raw meat, and an L11-2 Dragon sent tongues of fire up the ramp. But it made no difference, as the now flaming ’brids, Steelheads, and Ravagers charged through the conflagration to grab humans and wrap them in fire. The screams they produced overlaid each other.