by Dion Baia
Hans nodded, and made a noise with his mouth that sounded somewhere between a whistle and psst. Maximillian automatically sprang to life.
The small group began their descent down the flight of stairs. They started to notice a thunderous humming sound, getting louder as they continued. When they reached the bottom, the noise was almost unbearable.
They turned a corner and saw a guard walking in the opposite direction on a vast metallic walkway. It snaked in and around nine titanic rotary turbines that were nearly thirty feet high and weighing fifteen tons each. The entire room was enormous. Blasted out of solid rock, it was a twenty-two-thousand-square-foot space with a forty-foot-high ceiling buried far below the busy train terminal, unbeknownst to the average commuter and New Yorker. Against the wall was a twenty-foot-high machine helping to run and monitor the eleven thousand volts of alternating current, being converted into direct current by the nine deafening turbines. They were needed not only to power all of the trains above, but also two thousand miles of track throughout the Northeast.
The power station moved back in 1913 so developers could build skyscrapers on the surrounding land along Park Avenue. Its location became a godsend thirty years later, hidden from saboteurs once the war began. That was, until now.
Bogart crouched low and ran down the metallic walkway, pulled out a large ice pick, and got the drop on the guard. He put one hand around his forehead and pushed the ice pick into the base of the man’s skull with the other. The guard dropped to the floor, convulsing. Another guard rounded the corner, coming into view from behind one of the enormous AC/DC turbines at the opposite end. Max drew a pistol and shot the guard dead from the other side of the huge room.
Hans and Edward G. began to look around for the vault. As they continued, their attention was increasingly drawn to the massive turbines in front of them, running with a near-deafening sound.
“Christ, they must generate enough energy hidden away down here to power the entire railroad. So then, where’s the vault, mate?” Edward G. asked.
Morris and the elderly railroad employee arrived in front of a door. The worker paused and looked back at the detective.
“What’s on the other side of this door?” Morris asked, motioning with his hand.
“What you’re looking for.”
“Okay, you get outta here before the shooting starts and go wait for the cops. They’re on the way.”
The employee shot him a puzzled look.
“Believe it or not,” Morris said, “I’m actually trying to prevent something very bad from happening.”
The rail worker didn’t look convinced. “Whatever you say, brotha, just please don’t hurt me, I got a family.”
Morris rolled his eyes and yelled. “C’mon, I said screw!”
The man scuttled off. Morris turned to open the door, but it seemed like it was jammed. It wasn’t locked, but something was definitely preventing it from opening. He tried harder and really put his back into it. He eventually forced it open and peered into the vestibule, where he saw a dead military guard laying on the floor. The detective looked around and saw the open freight elevator. He quickly ran across the hall and got in, descending to the lowest level. He stepped out of the lift and instantly saw the other military officer also dead on the floor, behind him the doorway that led down to the sub-basement staircase.
Down in the colossal generator room, the large turbines hummed away at a deafening decibel. Maximillian stood and surveyed the entire room with its black-goggle-covered eyes, taking in all of its dimensions.
Morris hit the bottom of the stairwell and cracked open the door just enough to peek in. He carefully repositioned himself so he could see the other end of the hallway. He spotted Cagney and the masked Rory guarding the door behind a desk; the two MPs were dead on the floor.
The Irishman with the Bogart mask hurried back around after jogging the entire length of the walkway which encircled the huge machines. He rushed over to Hans.
“Where the fuck is the vault?”
He ignored Bogart’s question and instead, turned his head and said something to Max in German. The ghoul dropped to one knee, removed its backpack, and began to rummage through it.
Edward G. hurried around from the other direction, after himself doing a once-over of the room. He ran up to Bogart and looked from the German to Maximillian and back again.
“Hey, ya big gowl, for fucks sake, man! Where’s this safe I’m supposed to break into?”
He approached Max, and as he got closer, Maximillian backhanded him, sending him sliding painfully across the metal catwalk. Bogart raised his Thompson in the confusion. Hans was quick to pull out one of the Colt .45s modified to full auto and let off a burst of rounds. Bogart crouched down but was caught in the shoulder, causing him to drop the machine gun.
Edward G. jumped onto Max’s back and tried to fight it with a large switchblade. “Rory, it’s a setup!” he screamed up the stairs as loud as he could.
The German swung around and tried to get a clear shot, but a quick burst from Bogart’s Thompson, right into his back, ended Hans’s life. Bogart used the machine as a crutch and managed to get to his feet.
Still on Max, stabbing away furiously in its back and shoulder blades with his switchblade, Edward G. yelled to Bogart, “It’s a setup, Tom! Get outta here and tell Rory! Hurry, lad!”
Bogart dropped the gun and made a break for the way they came in, passing Edward G. and Maximillian tussling.
Upstairs, Rory and Cagney could hear the gunfire.
“Shit!” Rory said to his companion. “They’re shooting down there!”
In response to the shooting, Morris peeped his head out with the .45 in hand.
Clutching his bloody shoulder, Bogart raced out of the generator room and ran up the steps. He saw his boss at the top of the stairs.
“It’s a setup, Rory!” Bogart yelled as he stumbled coming up. “It’s a trick!”
Rory stiffened and turned to Cagney. “He said it’s a trap! We gotta get outta here.”
Morris stepped out from behind the doorway and made his move. “It’s all over, Caven. The Germans set you up. Throw down them rods and—”
Cagney swung around with his Thompson in hand, spitting hot lead at Morris. The detective leapt back into the doorway to take cover from the ricocheting metal. Luckily the whole place was made out of concrete and the projectiles from the machine gun that splintered the wooden door embedded themselves into the stairwell steps. But Morris was getting tired of yelling out orders like he was a cop.
He stepped farther back against the wall because of the ricocheting bullets. “Jesus…,” he uttered.
Down in the generator room, Maximillian had Eddie G. by the head, holding him up in the air and slowly crushing his skull. He screamed out, in horrendous pain. Bone and cartilage began to crack, and blood started to ooze out of the eye and breathing holes in the mask.
Bogart got to the top of the stairs and helped to lay down fire at the doorway where Morris was hiding, while Cagney reloaded his machine gun. Rory weighed his options and motioned to another door on the other side of the guard’s desk, labeled STAIRWAY EAST. He remembered from the blueprints they’d gotten from Laszlo that this exit led to a long staircase that went up to the terminal.
Rory pointed over to the doorway. “We gotta make a run for it, lads!”
Cagney finished reloading and clicked back the slide, then charged at Morris’s doorway, gun blazing. Behind him Rory and Bogart followed. Morris swung his door shut; luckily there was metal on his side, so it blocked most of the machine gun fire. The three made it to the exit but the door was locked. Bogart and Rory shot out the lock and Rory kicked it open, while Cagney finished unloading his magazine at Morris’s door. The gun clicked empty, and Morris, who had been waiting for the machine gun to stop firing, swung the door open, stuck his arm out, and squeez
ed off a few rounds, hitting the already-wounded Bogart. He fell to the ground while Rory and Cagney exited the hall and ran up the long flight of stairs, back toward the terminal.
Morris crept out. Bogart was on his back. He rolled over and with a small revolver in his right hand, squeezed off a round that went wild. The detective ducked to a knee and fired back, killing Tom, the man in the Bogart mask. He got up and cautiously crossed the hallway, surveying the situation around him. He contemplated going after Rory, but the door that led to the generator room was calling him.
“Shit…,” Morris said, cursing himself for making the decision to head down to the “super-secret” basement and make sure they didn’t leave anything down there.
He took out his tablets and popped a few more pills, noticing that he was almost out. Once they were gone, he’d come back down to Earth quickly and would no doubt need immediate medical attention because of his injuries, including the probable internal bleeding he theorized he was currently suffering from. So he needed these to last.
Morris descended the stairs, heading down toward the turbines. When he got to the bottom he looked out carefully, not knowing what to expect. The body of Edward G. lay lifeless on the ground, a dark pool of blood surrounding the crushed mask, with what looked like the remains of a squashed watermelon where his head used to be.
Maximillian was busy placing the last of the explosive charges from its bag onto one of the turbines. They were strategically located around every massive machine, and each device connected to a large wire that ran along the floor to the center of the room; for now that wire was temporarily coiled up.
Sergeant Ambrosio and Davies, along with several other officers, screeched to a halt in marked and unmarked Plymouth RMPs outside the main entrance to Grand Central Terminal on Forty-Second Street. They jumped out of their patrol cars and raced into the station. They reached the main concourse right when Rory and Cagney stumbled out of the cramped information booth after emerging from the spiral staircase and coming back up the way they knew how.
Their lookout in the George Raft mask was dumbfounded when he saw the expression on Rory’s face, and due to his panicked state, Rory didn’t see the law storming in, guns drawn.
“Quick, it’s a bloody trap, mate!” he screamed at Raft. “Every man for himself!”
George Raft, who still had the barrel of his revolver aimed in the employee’s ribs, turned back just in time to spot the police almost on top of them. He pushed the station worker to the ground and, without hesitation, began firing at the policemen. The information booth’s glass shattered from the projectiles.
Hysterical late-night travelers ran for their lives, screaming. A porter dropped the luggage he was carrying and slumped to the floor as his chest exploded. The woman behind him had the back of her head burst wide open, splattering her crimson blood, and her tall heels left the Tennessee pink marble floor when the bullet carried her slender frame back an entire five feet.
The robber who was positioned by the ticket windows watched the police hurry by. Once they passed, he put a Rags Ragland mask over his face, opened his coat, and revealed a sawed-off pump-action shotgun. He got one blast of a buckshot off, which embedded in the back of a uniformed officer, sending him flying in the air.
The man who had been standing up on the landing of the stairs by the Vanderbilt entrance slid a Barton MacLane mask down and whipped out a Thompson submachine. As he opened fire on those below, the people on the crowded floor looked like roaches scattering when the lights came on, panic propelling the commuters in every direction, running to get out of the open space and find cover.
After the man behind them discharged his shotgun, Ambrosio dropped to a knee, spun around, and emptied his .38 revolver. Rags Ragland tumbled into a nearby timetable stand before falling dead to the floor.
The gunfight was on as everyone exchanged rounds.
Morris kept low while he scanned the carnage in the generator room. Maximillian was on a knee, removing from the bag a large silver box which appeared to be a detonator. Max carefully set the device on the floor, taking the wires that laid coiled together and attaching them systematically to the box.
A guard appeared on the other side of the room, coming in from an entrance over by the control room. He saw the dead bodies and the wiring going from the explosives to the large detonator that Max was kneeling over. The guard’s hand traveled down to the holster on his belt. He fumbled to get his small revolver out, his hands trembling as he unloaded the tiny firearm at Maximillian. The giant turned with a level of extreme irritation after the slugs landed in its back and shoulders. Max walked over to the guard when his pistol had emptied.
This was Morris’s chance. He hurried out from the stairs and over to the detonator.
Max smacked the weapon out of the guard’s hand and picked him up by the throat. His eyes became bloodshot as all the air was squeezed out of him and his neck was crushed. The old man’s cranium flopped unnaturally to one side.
Morris rushed to untie the wires on the detonator. Max swung around and saw him…actually recognizing who the detective was. It dropped the guard’s lifeless body and was vocal for the first time, screaming like a demon seeing its only exit out of Hell.
Morris froze, the color quickly draining from his face as Maximillian charged at him. The detective raised the .45 in his hand and emptied it. The projectiles hit center mass, with the last round striking the left side of Max’s face, removing the meat of the cheek, the ear, and the cheekbone itself. It astounded Morris to see the ghoul completely unfazed by all the injuries.
Maximillian grabbed him by the collar and lifted him up into the air. Morris attempted in vain to whack it in the head with the butt of his empty gun; every hit that landed made a hollow and heinous sound. Finally Max had decided it had had enough, and hurled Morris far across the room into a concrete wall.
Morris landed on the floor, the wind knocked out of him. Max sprinted over, howling like a banshee, terrifying the detective. It kicked him hard in his side and Morris screamed out in pain, certain that last impact had reopened the stitches down his side. It grabbed Morris again, throwing him into another wall on the far side of the room. His damaged body came to rest on an electronic operating console that was on top of a wooden table. Morris lay there momentarily before falling onto the floor.
Max walked over to the detonator to reattach the wires.
Morris flopped over onto his back and stared groggily up at the ceiling, trying to regain his bearings and block out the ear-piercing noise. If he didn’t have the protective wrap around his torso and the glue holding his wound together, he figured his insides would have been spread all over this metal walkway.
At the end of the huge room, another Grand Central security officer burst out of a doorway on an overhead catwalk that snaked around the room, giving sight and access to the very tops of the large turbines. The young guard wasn’t seen by Max due to the noise, and perhaps the damage to the left side of its face, which serendipitously obscured the movements high above. The guard hurried down a metal staircase and caught the detective’s eye. Morris realized that he didn’t have a gun, only a flashlight and a long, old-fashioned lead pipe.
He was off the stairs in a flash, racing over with his arm held high in the air, and as hard as he could, he smacked Maximillian forcefully over the back of the head. A large crack appeared from the severity of the blow, exposing metal and bone. Its cranium began to instantaneously bleed, the color of the blood so dark it almost looked black. Max turned back toward the guard, revealing not only its horrendously bloody face, but the entire left side that was missing. The man recoiled in shock, accidentally dropping the pipe from his hand. He made a run for the exit, hoping to get reinforcements. Max picked up the lead pipe and threw it through the air like an axe, eventually spearing the fleeing man through his chest. He stumbled along, his own momentum keeping him going, but soon coll
apsed on the walkway like a discarded ragdoll.
Morris managed to stand up and was leaning against the wooden work table in the corner by the wall. He was on the verge of losing consciousness due to the extreme pain in most of his body. He took the second-to-last tablet of his precious Pervitin, putting it into his mouth and chewing. That would delay the pain long enough and give him the energy to leave the wooden table currently supporting him.
He glanced around for something to use and saw a toolbox under the table. Next to it was a can of oil or some other type of high-end-looking lubricant. It didn’t matter what it was, only that Morris’s eyes lit up once he saw the flame decal on the side of the metal tin, as well as the large red words reading: DANGER! HIGHLY FLAMMABLE…. He snatched it up, delighted to find the can was practically full. He delved into his pockets, digging so hard he thought he might actually rip through his trousers, but soon found what he was looking for. With the oil can in his hand, he gradually made his way over to confront Maximillian, right as the giant turned to face him.
Morris tore off the lid and threw dark liquid into Max’s face. That blinded it long enough to give Morris the time to finish dumping the entire contents onto Max’s head and shoulders. He flicked back the top of his Zippo and his thumb came crashing down on the flint wheel; it sparked the very first time and the wick lit. He’d never been quite so happy to see those beautiful blue and orange dancing flames.
“Suck on this!” Morris heard himself say before realizing the words had left his mouth. With a careful grace, he lobbed the Zippo right at Max’s face.
The whole upper part of its body erupted into a colorful blaze of dark blue and golden yellow. Maximillian screamed, its hands and arms trying desperately to put out the fire. Its features began to disappear as the flames engulfed the body, spiraling upward in a fiery dance. It attempted to frantically grab hold of Morris but was unsuccessful.
