by Robert Clark
‘Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.’
‘We need to get them out of here,’ I shouted, but even my own voice was barely audible over the deafening crowd.
I grabbed Noble and pulled her away, towards the throng. Those who had seen me shoot moved further back, fear evident on their faces. But it wasn’t enough. Not even close.
I hoped the bomb was secure enough. Hoped the explosives contained enough to dampen the radius.
‘Ten, nine, eight.’
I kept moving. Kept sweeping the crowd back.
‘Five.’
Move further.
‘Four.’
Push them away.
‘Three.’
So much noise.
‘Two.’
Was it enough?
‘One.’
I stopped. Listened. Hoped.
‘Happy New Y-’
The boom sounded like nothing I’d ever heard. Like an underground detonation, or a tectonic plate shifting, or a nuclear bomb going off right before my very eyes. The mere existence of it commanded a total and absolute silence from the crowd, who all turned just in time to see the ramifications of its destruction.
The van jolted on the spot, but it didn’t erupt into a fireball. An invisible shockwave erupted out of the device, spreading like an infectious disease. But instead of stealing human life, it seized every single electronic device within its reach, and slaughtered it. The effect was not like that of a domino set tumbling one by one, but more like someone had kicked the table right out from under it. The once dazzling and illuminating epicentre of technology was extinguished.
And as the new year was born, New York City descended into darkness.
Thirty-Nine
Blackout
The cheers and celebrations of tens of thousands of people survived for only a matter of seconds. Like an echo from a silenced scream, they rang out into the night, growing ever colder and more distant with each passing moment as those around began to realise what had happened. The silence that followed carried with it a deathly chill, as though the ghosts of dead technology had caused the temperature to plummet.
It didn’t happen straight away. Just as the moment preceding a tsunami sees a tide retreating far beyond the norm, fear rippled across the crowd. But, just like a rising flood, the consensus began to change. And as it washed over the sea of confused, sullen faces, a cancerous prospect sparked. And like an ember in a summer’s forest, it grew.
At first, it was little more than a murmur. A giddy thought of rebellion. But as it spread across the crowd, that thought became a reality, and one that must be acted upon with immediacy. The first cheer came roaring over the crowd like a war cry, and was met with a response, not in the dozens, but in the hundreds, and before they had a chance to die away, the situation had changed.
Movement everywhere. A stampede of terrified New Yorkers ran this way and that. Tension grew like that on a battlefield, with no way to tell who was your friend and who was your foe. I heard over the noise the sound of a window smashing, which caused an eruption of more cheers as others followed suit. Fires burst out of seemingly nowhere as chaos descended on the once joyful party.
Noble snatched my hand and pulled me away from the van. As she did, I heard a noise that did nothing but fill my heart with dread. Explosions. Distant, and little more than that of a car combusting, but I could tell they weren’t a consequence of the blackout, they were a part of it. Gail’s plan to ensue chaos reigned meant more than one attack in one location. It was many, and precise, and efficient. From the rooftop of a nearby building, I saw a fireball erupt as what I guessed to be a nearby generator went up in flames.
The explosion seemed only to fuel the riots, who attacked with even more gusto. Already I could see police officers sprinting into action. Impeded by the overwhelming numbers, their orders to desist went unnoticed as the rampage burned brighter.
I shouted over to Noble.
‘What do we do?’
She didn’t respond at first. Instead, she led me through the crowds towards a parked police cruiser. I pulled my hand free, and she turned around.
‘We need their help,’ she barked.
‘You go to them, we part ways. Simple as that.’
And although I could tell she hadn’t forgone the idea entirely, she made no attempt to drag me back into custody. She scanned the crowds.
‘We have to stop this,’ she shouted over the incessant combination of caustic rage and terror.
‘How? Nothing short of the national guard is going to make a dent. We need to focus on the smaller picture for a change. We need to find Parker.’
‘Where would they be?’ shouted Noble as a hooded man ran past her, screaming with jubilation.
‘I don’t know.’
‘We can’t leave this up to chance. We have to find them.’
Somewhere, amidst the chaos, Cece and Gail were about to end an innocent man’s life. Somewhere within nearly eight hundred square kilometres of space were three people. Not good. Need to narrow it down.
I scanned the city skyline, hoping it would form some sort of order, but all that met my eyes were a nauseatingly vast array of shops, restaurants, office blocks, apartments, bars, libraries, departments, hospitals and hotels.
Something stirred. Something forgotten shuffled in the stack of overflowing thoughts. I didn’t know what, but I knew it was there, hidden deep. I looked around some more. Focused on individual buildings. Tried to coax the memory back up to the surface. What was it? When had it occurred? I looked at signs, hanging like corpses from the side of sullen buildings. Millions of dollars in lost ad-revenue right there. No doubt the big cheeses funnelling their cash into them would be pissed. That thought made the memory wiggle, just a little. A couple more rocks broke loose, revealing more of it. Anger. Rage. Hatred.
The murder wall.
Hidden down in the deepest recesses of a mountain in Montana lay all the pieces to the clue.
But what was it? I tried to cast my mind back, picturing each and every article that I’d read as though my mind could fill in the missing pieces for me. But the more I tried to focus, the more the memories floated away like a kite in a gust. My head felt like shit. Too many beatings fuzzed everything. And like a pulled muscle, the more I tried to use it, the more it made the headache worse. All I could see with any clarity was Parker’s service record, pinned up on the wall underneath a…
‘That’s it,’ I shouted, shocking Noble.
‘What?’
‘There was this advert for a hotel pinned up on their murder wall. In the bunker, they had a whole wall’s worth of documents about Parker. Everything from recent interviews to his service record from way back when he was a soldier. There was this advert for a hotel right here in New York pinned up next to it. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it was the only thing up there that didn’t make sense. It was the only document on an entire wall dedicated to Andrew Parker that didn’t have his name or face plastered across it. I should have noticed it sooner. It was literally staring me in the face.’
‘What was it called, the hotel?’
‘The something plaza. Shit, I can’t remember. I’m sure it had Plaza in the name. How well do you know the city?’
‘I’ve been here a couple of times.’
‘Know it well enough to know the best places to stay?’
‘No.’
‘Parker wouldn’t stay somewhere low key. He’d be in the Ritz or something. How many places like that would be around here?’
‘A couple hundred. It is New York after all.’
‘Think big. Think the biggest, most stupendously lavish place in the whole goddamn city. Parker isn’t any man. He wants to be the big chief. He wants the seat at the top of the world. He wouldn’t settle with four out of five stars. Probably not even five out of five. It’s got to be six out of five, minimum for a guy like that. Where fits that bill and has Plaza in the name?’
She looked around
. Tried to scout out locations in a storm of misfortune.
‘I think there’s a place on fifty-fourth street. I’ve never been there, but I heard they just finished building it a couple of weeks ago. Supposed to be the place to go. I’m sure it was called The Westmorland Plaza.’
‘How far away is fifty-fourth street?’
She pointed down the street behind her.
‘That way,’ she said, ‘maybe half a mile.’
She turned and ran through the crowd. I followed as best I could. There was so much chaos. So many people. The more I looked, the more I realised just how tipped the scales were in terms of terrified civilians to rampaging criminals. Maybe one of the latter for every one hundred of the former. But their mere presence tainted everything.
Staying close to Noble was a struggle. She ran with renewed motive, fuelled by months of unrequested stagnation. Her atrophied muscles seemed like a forgotten memory. All the while, I felt like total garbage. My limbs hurt. My bones ached. My head throbbed. My energy was a fallacy. With each passing step, I felt myself waning. Craving release. And each step only made that battle harder.
I blinked away the exhaustion and looked for Noble. Her scruffy hair bounced behind her as she galloped through the crowds, already much further ahead of me. I blinked again. Saw stars. Blinked. Lights merged together and…
I opened my eyes. The crowd was gone. Times Square was gone. Noble was gone. I could hear a distant noise, but nothing close by. I looked around. I was inside. Dark walls caged me in. Where the hell was I? I spun around, saw an open door and headed for it. To my right, I saw the street. I ran out.
I wasn’t near Times Square, but I could see it down the street, a couple of blocks away. I looked up at the building I’d been in. It looked like a block of flats. Not a fancy hotel. I couldn’t even see such a place nearby. Nor Noble.
There were lots of people around. Most were fleeing, but not all. Some stood in the street and watched the carnage breaking out down the road. I ran over to a frumpy woman in a dressing gown who held a dead mobile phone in her hands. She turned as I approached.
‘What street is this?’ I asked.
She looked from me to the riots as though the two connected somehow. I reached out to put my hand on her shoulder.
‘What street is this?’ I asked again.
‘West Forty-Eighth,’ she said, her New York accent heavy in her smokers throat. ‘Why?’
What the shit was I doing on West Forty-Eighth?
‘Thanks,’ I said, before setting off at a run back towards Times Square.
What the hell had happened? I’d blinked. That was it. And somehow I’d drifted several blocks west of where I’d closed my eyes. I tried to summon the Wolf, but there was nothing. His absence was surely notable. And his desire to always flee the action was damn near trademarked.
I didn’t head straight for Times Square. No reason to go back to the mayhem. Instead, I took the first left and ran parallel. Enormous skyscrapers loomed high above me in all directions. Glancing up did little but exacerbate the nausea, so I kept my eyes ahead.
One block passed, then two, then three. I counted up the street numbers as I passed. Fifty-first. Fifty-second. Fifty-third. I turned onto Fifty-fourth, automatically heading right, but any number of the buildings stretching in what had to be at least a mile or so in either direction could have been The Westmorland Plaza, or any of the other billion or so hotels in the city. I needed more information.
I stopped the first person to come my way. A young man with a baseball cap sat backwards on his head. He looked at me like I was the boogeyman.
‘Where is The Westmorland Plaza?’ I asked.
‘The what?’ he replied. He was drunk.
‘The Westmorland Pla-’
‘-za… shit.’
It happened again. The young man was gone. Fifty-fourth street was gone. I was standing in a convenience store. The entire front window looking out onto the street had been smashed. People were running around. Shouting. Screaming. Fires. Police.
I wasn’t alone. A withered black woman was standing a couple of feet off to my right. In her hands she clutched a baseball bat.
‘Ya’ll best leave b’fore I call the cops,’ she shouted. ‘I don’t wan’ to hurt you.’
The confidence in her voice did not stretch to her body, which was shaking like a leaf in a storm.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, before running back through the smashed window into the street.
Not good. Not good at all. Blackouts were the last thing I needed now. Again, I searched for a sign. Something, anything to help. At the corner of the street was a sign. A big, literal green street sign hanging off the side of the streetlight. The way I’d come said West Fifty-Sixth, and to my left was Eighth Avenue. I headed that way, past bars and fast-food restaurants and sandwich shops and markets. Back towards Fifty-Fourth.
And as I ran, I saw it. The big, silver letters standing proud over the entrance that read The Westmorland Plaza. Most of it was still hidden from view, but I hedged my bets that The Westmor ended with land Plaza. As I ran across the street to be on the same side and turned the corner, I could tell this was the place I sought.
The front doors - or rather, where the front doors should have been - had a silver police van sticking out of them. Shards of glass were strewn across the street, and one of the pillars that held up the giant letters above had crumpled, causing the z and a at the end of the title to sag precariously into the road.
I ran for the door, wishing I had a weapon. Noble had the stolen pistol, but where she was, I didn’t know. Maybe she was still searching. Maybe she was already inside.
‘Don’t.’
Something strange happened. Like running into an invisible clothes line, I felt my body reel backwards. The Wolf.
‘What are you doing?’ I shouted.
‘Saving us.’
‘I have to get inside.’
‘If you do, you will die,’ the Wolf snarled. ‘You can’t go up against a dozen armed hostiles with just your bare hands.’
‘I have to do something. Gail will kill Parker if I don’t.’
‘What does it matter? We don’t owe Parker anything.’
‘I can’t let Gail get away with this.’
‘Why?’ he snapped. ‘She’s already won. She wanted chaos, and she’s got it. Parker’s death doesn’t negate all this.’
‘Then she deserves to pay,’ I replied, forcing myself forwards. The Wolf resisted.
‘Noble will hunt her down. She knows the truth. Gail can’t get away with this. Second Solace is finished. This isn’t our fight.’
‘It’s my fight.’
‘It’s your death if you go inside.’
‘It’s my decision.’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said.
Then there was blackness.
I was running. Right down the street. Abandoned cars littered the road on either side of me. I stopped dead. Looked around. Saw nothing I recognised. He’d done it again.
‘You son of a bitch,’ I shouted at him, startling a couple of people nearby. I ignored them and looked for another sign.
East Sixty-Fifth. He’d taken me much further than before. And I was exhausted. He hadn’t stopped running. Off to my left I could see the corner of Central Park. I was a mile away, at least. Son of a bitch.
I didn’t have time to run back. I spun around and looked at the cars. The owners had fled, spooked by the madness. I couldn’t blame them. It was like the apocalypse had descended upon them. Y2K delayed by seven years. They had been warned.
I checked each car, hoping desperately someone had made a foolish error. Sure enough, someone had. A green Ford had been abandoned with its nose up against the kerb. Keys dangled in the ignition. I jumped in, twisted the key, and reversed back into the road.
But as I did, I felt it again. That wave of exhaustion and helplessness. He was fighting for control again. I couldn’t let him. I slapped myself across the face and buzzed down th
e windows. Let the rush of cold air do the work for me as I accelerated down panicked streets.
At Central Park, I turned left and headed back towards Fifty-Fourth. My eyes rolled in my head, desperate for release. I didn’t let them. Wouldn’t let them. Not again. I spun the car right, then left, then right again, weaving through increasingly busy streets. It seemed impossible how many people there were. As I approached The Westmorland Plaza again, I was forced to abandon the vehicle, such was the density of immovable vehicles barricading the streets. The drive had done me good. Forced some life back into my limbs. Cleared some fog from my head.
I could see the hotel again, a block ahead of me. The ruined police van was still there, nosed into the front doors. I fought the tiredness that descended as I approached. Jumped through the gaping hole where the front doors had once been, and ran inside.
‘You won’t win,’ hissed the Wolf.
I ignored him. Just kept going.
Into the darkness.
Into the storm.
Forty
The Westmorland Plaza
The hotel atrium was a total mess. Glass shards had cascaded into the once opulent space, with fragments of the door supports going so far into the room as to collide with the reception desk, and damage it beyond repair. The top of a blonde head was visible behind it, and a terrified woman's whimpers met my ears. I could see what had spooked her, beyond the devastation, of course. The body of a security guard was strewn across the marble floor by the elevators. The pool of blood already dark and far-spread.
‘You need to get out of here,’ I called to the woman. ‘It's not safe.’
Her response came with another petrified groan. I didn't approach her.