They took off towards the playing fields where the park opened up and bordered Central Park West. Maybe there they could get free of the mad panic and bloodshed. People were lying on the ground everywhere, trampled half to death by the fleeing crowd that was no longer united, but selfish and afraid. A young woman with two broken arms lay on her back sobbing, but no one stopped to help her. The crowd moved too fast for anybody to risk being a Good Samaritan.
As the two Sams entered the emerald grass of the playing fields, Samuel slipped and almost pulled Samantha down with him. He fell in a mess, but made it up again quickly. He tried to continue, but gritted his teeth and hissed.
“Samuel, are you okay?”
“My ankle’s gone. I’m too old to be dashing around in blind panic.”
Samantha reached out to help him, but it was just as a squad of teenage boys in football jerseys came ploughing along and barged right into them. Samantha hit the ground hard, cursing at the boys from on her back. “You fucking bastards!”
They’d ploughed into Samuel too. He lay on his back, moaning. Samantha dragged herself across the grass to him to check he was okay. The crowd continued its stampede, clattering feet dodging Samantha and Samuel only at the very last second. Soon somebody would not be paying attention and would crash right into them.
There was also the giant to worry about—currently stomping its way towards the playing fields.
“Samuel, get up. That thing is coming.”
“I can’t,” he whined. “My leg.”
Samantha looked down at Samuel’s leg and saw that his sprained ankle had developed into a broken shinbone. The glistening white shard poked out of his trousers and glistened with globs of blood.
“Those goddamn jocks.”
Samuel sighed. “Don’t blame them. They’re just frightened. You go on, miss. Get out of here.”
“I’m not leaving you, Samuel.”
“You just met me. I’ll forgive you.”
“I wouldn’t forgive myself.”
“Better living with guilt than dying with honour, if you ask me.”
Samantha glanced towards the edge of the playing fields. A group of police had assembled there and were discharging their weapons at the towering monster. The giant bent and swung a long arm, scooping them up as if they were matchsticks. The screaming police officers tumbled twenty feet in the air before gravity reclaimed them and smashed them against the ground. A dozen bullets had hit the giant, but it carried on without the slightest concern.
“Get out of here,” Samuel grunted through his pain.
“I can’t leave you.”
“I can’t let you die for me.”
Samantha wished she’d met Samuel years ago. The instant connection they’d made was rare, but it was destined to go to waste. She shook her head, and fought back tears. “I’m sorry.”
“I know you are, miss, but it’s been lovely meeting you. Now get gone.”
Samantha nodded, leapt up, and ran. She wanted to glance back at Samuel, but refused to allow herself. Nothing to be gained by a final look.
Police cars skidded in the grass up ahead, leaving long brown furrows in their wake. Officers leapt out either side in pairs, armed with shotguns and rifles. They wasted no time in heading straight towards the Beast of Manhattan.
The furthest reaches of the crowd had crossed the edge of the playing fields and were spilling into the busy thoroughfare of Central Park West. Traffic screeched to a halt as yellow taxis shunted into the backs of city buses, and unlucky pedestrians got caught in the middle, bleeding out as twisted metal pierced their vital organs. Horns honked so persistently that the individual sounds merged into one long, continuous blare. That seemed far away to Samantha, though, who was running across the playing fields. Her legs started to tire, and young men and thinner women overtook her on both sides. A helicopter zipped overhead, low enough to make the grass shimmer. The sound of machine gunfire arrived like something out of a Vietnam War movie. Samantha was still running as fast as she could when the hair on the back of her neck stood up.
She glanced back over her shoulder.
The Beast of Manhattan was right behind her.
The ground shook.
She was done for.
Something crashed into Samantha, cracking against her skull and knocking her vision sideways. She hit the ground, and something crushed her. Her eyes remained open, but she saw nothing but darkness.
The Beast bellowed.
A stranger’s hand covered her face as she lay there in the grass for several minutes, wondering why she wasn’t dead. The stranger who had fallen on top of her did not move an inch. Was he okay?
Samantha slid the stranger’s arm away from her face and tugged at their clothing until she found a belt. When she finally tugged the guy off of her, she managed to sit up. She gagged when she saw the caved in face of a teenager lying beside her. The Beast must have struck him. His dead body falling on Samantha had saved her life.
The playing fields were quiet. Bodies littered the ground like confetti. The Beast had marched away into the city, where chaos was now visible. The epicentre seemed to be outside the Holy Trinity church, which had caught fire.
Samantha dragged herself to her feet, sobbing. The shock and utter bewilderment finally took a hold of her. The dead stranger’s blood soaked her, and she tasted it on her lips. What the hell had happened? Why was New York always subjected to such horror? She’d been a child in Utah during 9/11, but she often imagined the terror in the city on that terrible day. Now she knew.
She almost fell back down to the blood soaked grass as her knees clashed together like cymbals. The smell of cordite assaulted the air, and from somewhere she heard the faint moans of the injured, but it was impossible to identify anybody alive in such a mess. So she took a walk in the park she loved, no longer pleasant and green, but grizzly and red.
It didn’t take long to find Samuel. She’d left him at the edge of the playing field, and that was where he remained. It was unclear what had killed him, but his sagging chest spoke of badly broken ribs. A slight bruise on his temple might also have been the culprit.
“It was good meeting you, Samuel.”
More moaning, but this time louder, and from many voices. Samantha glanced up and peered toward the carousel where the nightmare had started. The great glowing archway still hovered above the black stone with its shimmering, translucent centre. Whatever it was, and wherever it led to, it was still open.
Someone approached Samantha.
The hunched over man was hurt, his flesh singed and smoking. Flaps of blackened skin hung from his naked body and littered the floor behind him like gory breadcrumbs. His moans were desperate and pained—a walking embodiment of nerve-searing agony. Samantha hurried towards him, tears filling her eyes. “Oh God, I’ll find you some help. Just…just sit down.”
The burned man didn’t accept her help. Instead, he snarled like an animal.
“It’s okay. I want to help you. I-”
The injured man grabbed Samantha’s throat with a crushing grip. “You should concentrate on helping yourself, whore.”
Samantha tried to wrench the hand away from her throat, but her attacker was inhumanly strong. Every time she gained a grip, her fingers slid on loose chunks of burned flesh that sloughed away in her hands.
“Please,” she begged.
“Your begging is a song the whole world will be singing. We bring unending torture and eternal slavery. Your cities will crumble, your children will weep blood and shit themselves in misery.”
Samantha choked, the vice around her throat tightening. Her terrified eyes fell upon a legion of horrors.
An army of smouldering, blackened monsters marched across Central Park. A dozen at first, but then more and more. Soon there were hundreds. Burned monsters from some faraway, fiery pit.
Demons.
Samantha felt herself grow weaker. Her eyes bulged in their sockets as she kept on struggling, but it was no use.
Death beckoned, and she could not refuse its call.
“Why?” Samantha managed to ask in her final moments.
But she didn’t live long enough to get an answer.
~Guy Granger~
Lower Bay, New York
“What the hell is happening over there, Captain?” Guy Granger’s second-in-command, Lieutenant James Tosco, stared at him with piercing blue eyes.
Guy didn’t have a clue what was happening. The view through his binoculars was difficult to make sense of. It was hard to see past Brooklyn from where the USCG Hatchet floated in the Lower Bay, but Manhattan was at the centre of something bad. The city was in panic. Fires had broken out everywhere, and the sound of chaos made it all the way across the Upper Bay. The Hatchet, a 263 foot U.S. Coast Guard cutter, had been approaching New York Harbour for routine maintenance when it had been halted by a state of emergency being declared. It appeared the terrorists had struck again.
This time there were no exploding planes or toppling buildings. The damage seemed smaller in scale, yet wider spread. The distance between individual fires stretched several blocks, and dozens of helicopters spiralled the skyline from Hell’s Kitchen to Midtown East.
Tosco cleared his throat. “Captain?”
Guy lowered his binoculars. “I don’t know what’s happening, Lieutenant, but it’s bad.”
“Then we need to offer assistance.”
“No. Command told us to hold firm, so we hold and await orders.”
Tosco grunted. “The men are unsettled, Captain. Many have family working in the city. In the time it takes to wait for orders, people will die.”
Guy said nothing, just examined his second-in-command carefully. Eventually, he said, in a voice that brooked no argument, “There are ten officers aboard this ship, Lieutenant, and sixty enlisted seamen. If you are suggesting we will have some kind of disruption on our hands, it would lead me to seriously doubt your credentials as my senior officer.”
Tosco bristled, pointy ears twitching beneath the brim of his officer’s cap. “Everything is under control, Captain. I just felt it my duty to inform you of the men’s feelings.”
“Noted, Lieutenant, but you’re not running a union. You carry out my orders, not theirs. Go and perform a weapons check and put the crew on high alert. If we do get instructions to head into harbour, I want us to be ready.”
“Aye, aye, Captain.” Tosco snapped off a sloppy salute and stormed away.
Guy exhaled. His second-in-command was becoming a problem of late. Too ambitious and bull-headed to accept orders without complaint, James Tosco had reached a stage where he obviously felt he should be commanding his own ship. A strapping lad of thirty, smart and athletic, he certainly had the aptitude for command, but this was Guy’s ship, and he did not tolerate insubordination, or a negative attitude from anyone. You let things slide once and you gave the go ahead to be undermined at every turn.
He would need to deal with Lieutenant Tosco.
Chief Petty Officer, and Guy’s oldest friend, Frank Jacobs, gave him a sheepish grin that suggested he wanted to be of use. The man’s chubby brown cheeks had sagged in old age and his once fuzzy black hair was now brittle and white. He looked older than usual, and worried.
“This isn’t going to be a good day, is it, Captain?”
Guy placed his binoculars down on the desk and said, “I’m thinking not. We heard anything back from Command yet?”
“Nothing other than instructions to hold ready. They don’t seem to understand what’s going on either. Apparently, it has something to do with that strange black stone they found in Central Park this morning. It exploded or something.”
“They say there are matching stones all over the country.”
“All over the world,” Frank corrected. “My aunt in Trinidad said there’s one right in the middle of town, next to the laundrette.”
“How is your aunt?”
“Eighty-eight and still growing her own strawberries. They’re the most delicious things you ever tasted, Captain.”
Guy grinned, then spoke more seriously, “What do you think is happening, Frank? Has New York been attacked again?”
“After 9/11, I don’t see how any attack could succeed. Every inch of New York is covered by half-a-dozen security cameras. You only have to utter the word bomb and Homeland will turn up on your doorstep ready to waterboard you. Whatever this stone they found in the park is, I don’t think it’s the work of terrorists. I’m not sure if I feel better or worse about that.”
Guy raised an eyebrow. “You’re not one of those who believes it’s aliens?”
“I don’t know what I believe, just have a bad feeling, that’s all. I’m an old man, Captain, and my waters tell me this will be a long day.”
“Well, whatever happened is still going on. Is Tosco right, Frank? Should we be helping?”
“We do as we’re commanded.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
Guy chuckled. “I’ve known you twenty years, Frank, and I don’t think I’ve ever once seen you break a rule.”
“I leave that to men like you. If you want to help, then help. Long as I follow your orders, I’m doing my job. It’s for you to worry about what Command will think.”
Guy looked back through his binoculars and was certain that the devastation had doubled in just the last five minutes. More fires had taken hold, and Army helicopters zipped across an ever expanding area like hungry buzzards. Brooklyn remained quiet, but Roosevelt Island was aflame and the chaos had begun snatching at the fringes of Long Island.
“Take us a quarter-mile into the Upper Bay, Frank. I want to see if our help will even make a difference before I think about lending it.”
“Aye, Captain.”
Guy left the pilothouse and headed down to the armoury. He expected to find Lieutenant Tosco there, but instead, he found two ensigns and a dozen enlisted sailors. They stood to attention when they saw him approach.
Guy waved a hand. “At ease. How goes it?”
Ensign Lucy Smith answered, “Lieutenant Tosco asked us to ready weapons and ammunition, sir.”
Guy nodded, pleased that Tosco had carried out his orders as requested. “Good.”
“How long until we enter the harbour, Captain?”
“Who said we’re going into harbour, Ensign Smith?”
“Oh, I… My mistake, Captain. I just assumed.”
Guy gritted his teeth. Tosco had been getting ahead of himself. “No decision has been made whether to head into harbour, Ensign, so do not pre-empt my orders.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Do we know what’s happening out there, Captain?” asked one of the ship’s mechanics, Seaman Biggins.
Ensign Smith shouted at him. “Biggins! Do not address the captain unless you are spoken to.”
Guy waved a hand. “It’s okay, Ensign. Truthfully, Seaman Biggins, I don’t know what’s happening, but it’s not anything good. As soon as Command gives an update, I will share it with the crew.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“You’re welcome. Now, where is Lieutenant Tosco?”
Ensign Smith pointed towards the wide shutter at the end of the storage area. “Out on launch deck prepping the Jayhawk.”
Guy gave a slight nod and marched away. “As you were, sailors.”
He went over to the shutter and raised it. The wind came rushing in, along with the sound of distant chaos from Manhattan. Tosco was indeed outside on the launch deck, sitting inside the Jayhawk rescue helicopter and running system checks. The main rotor spun and the rear prop propeller whirred in fits and spurts.
“Everything nominal, Lieutenant?”
“I’m still running checks, but aye, sir.”
“Why did you tell Ensign Smith that we’re heading into the harbour?”
“I said we need to prepare to go into harbour.”
“You can see her confusion.”
Tosco stopped flipping switches
for a moment and stared at Guy. “It’s only a matter of time before Command gives orders to head in. People are in trouble, and we’re floating out here doing nothing when we should be helping.”
“What we do is entirely my decision, Lieutenant. You give orders without my say so and you’ll find yourself working a tugboat in the Arctic.”
“Don’t threaten me, sir.”
“It’s no threat.”
Tosco hopped out of the helicopter and faced Guy down. “Times have changed. The Coast Guard doesn’t pull drowning fishermen out of the sea anymore. We fight drug lords and human traffickers. We are men of action.”
“If you want to fight so badly, Lieutenant, I suggest you transfer to the Navy. They would be glad to have you.”
Tosco rolled his eyes. “I’m not interested in fighting foreign wars. I am a Coast Guard because I want to protect the shores of my country. Right now, I am failing to do that. The citizens of New York need us.”
“The men on this ship need you, Lieutenant. They need you to do your job and carry out my orders. Undermine me and you jeopardise the safety of the crew.”
“Then don’t give me a reason to undermine you, Captain”
Tosco went to walk away, but Guy stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Do you know what it takes to send a man to the brig, Lieutenant? My say so, that’s all. It’s been some time since I’ve had to lock a man up, but go and ask Chief Petty Officer Jacobs if I’m willing to do it. I once locked him up for six weeks without letting him out.”
Tosco looked surprised as Guy hoped he would be.
He capitalised on the advantage by continuing. “That’s right, Lieutenant. Frank Jacobs is my oldest friend, and about the straightest shooter you could ever hope to meet, but even he got on the wrong side of me once. Let’s see how you fare if I deem you guilty of insubordination. Or even if you just piss me off.”
Tosco licked his lips and kept quiet.
“I will take your silence as a good sign. I appreciate your initiative on checking the response vehicles. Carry on. I’ll let you know if you’re needed.”
Guy marched away, just as the ship lifted anchor and began to turn starboard.
Hell on Earth- the Complete Series Box Set Page 5
