“No shit,” Rowark replied. Grabbing an unopened bottle of whiskey from behind the bar, he took it and headed toward the trucks. A hasty Taylor paid for the drinks and the bottle and took off after him.
* * *
“Hey, soldier,” Rowark called out in the street. “What’s buzzin’, cousin?”
“Halt!” the nervous young sentry shouted back. “Who goes there?”
“At ease, Private.” Rowark flashed his silver bars. “I’m Lieutenant Rowark and”—he turned to indicate Taylor coming up behind him—“this fine fellow is Lieutenant Taylor, both courtesy of the Army Air Force.”
“Sirs!” The private noticed the bottle in Eddie’s hand, and seemed to relax a bit. “Y’all late for the party, sirs?”
Rowark narrowed his eyes. “What party would that be, soldier?”
When doubt crossed the private’s face, Taylor jumped in.
“Don’t yank the man’s chain, Eddie. Of course that’s why we’re here.” Patting the boy on the back, he shrugged at his companion. “Might as well go on in have a look-see.”
Taking a dissatisfied swig from the bottle, Rowark agreed.
* * *
Inside, the lobby was vacant. They were met with distant sounds of chaos. Elsewhere in the building, men were hooting, women were screaming, and glass was breaking. Rowark and Taylor entered cautiously, finding cover as they went. Taylor picked up a broken chair leg to use as a club, while Rowark was content with his bottle as a weapon. When they heard gunfire, they hastened their approach.
A Japanese doctor stumbled out into the corridor and slumped against the wall. As blood pooled around him, two army buddies within the room held down the dead man’s screaming patient while a third had his way with her.
Taylor boiled over. This was the party. Some jackass army officer had got it in his head to have his men let off a little steam—and there were nearly fifty men who got off those trucks. The entire hospital, including its female staff and patients, was their playground.
He thought about the Japanese officers who had assaulted the village in the Solomons. About the atrocities that had been committed there. Some might say this was tit for tat.
For Taylor, however, it wasn’t payback.
Payback didn’t exist.
Like the people on that island, these patients were innocents. The fact that they were Japanese didn’t make it alright. They were people.
We stop them from committing atrocities, he fumed, and then do the same to them? Without further thought he moved toward the pinned woman. Twirling his purloined chair leg in a wide arc, he clipped the two restrainers in the head before mashing it into her assailant’s face. As he pounded on the overeager GI, Rowark gently set down his bottle and tackled the other two, fists flying.
Taylor tried to help the frightened woman, but she kicked and clawed at him. Her eyes were tightly shut.
“Look at me!” he demanded.
Slowly she opened her eyes.
“Okay?” he whispered.
Shaking, she nodded. Taylor took off his jacket and put it around her shoulders, then opened the closet and gestured for her to hide. Tears streaming down her face, she nodded and complied.
Down the corridor, the two men could hear more of the same. A lot more. They had their work cut out for them. Rowark picked up his bottle and took one last gulp. Holding it by the neck, he rapped it against the wall, shattering it and sending up a spray. The broken glass made for a menacing weapon.
“You ready?” he asked.
Taylor wished Rowark had offered him a swig before he broke that bottle. He licked his dry lips and nodded once. With his friend a step behind him, Taylor rushed toward the melee.
* * *
Brent had dragged Maddox a safe distance from the downed craft, fearful of additional explosions that never came. The engine had managed to snuff itself out in the crash, causing an explosion of shrapnel but no fireball. After some time had passed, Brent ventured back into the ship to find water and supplies.
His skipper was in shock. Blinded and tossed around, Maddox likely had broken ribs and internal bleeding. Still, the ship had suffered worse than its commander. While many of her control components were intact, the exploding engine had shorted out all main power systems. For all intents and purposes, she was dead on arrival and beyond repair.
Liberty 2 wouldn’t be rescuing anyone.
Still, it could have been worse. Strapped into his control couch, Brent had weathered the accident. He was shaken and dizzy, but not broken. The ship’s de facto medical officer, at least he was fit to administer first aid. For what it was worth.
Water in hand, he approached the prone Maddox. The colonel awoke with a start.
“No. No, no, Skipper, it’s me again,” Brent assured him. “Just me.”
“Brent…?” After a moment, Maddox seemed to realize where he was. What had happened. He licked his lips. “Did you contact Earth?”
“I tried to, sir.” Brent grimaced. “Not a crackle.” He had to tell Maddox what he had discovered in orbit.
Had to.
“Skipper, I took an Earth time reading just before re-entry.”
Maddox fought his pain and concentrated on the conversation.
“What’d you get?”
“Three-niner-five-five,” Brent replied.
Maddox stared at him. “Three thousand, nine hundred and fifty-five—”
“AD,” Brent clarified. At least, he reminded himself. The counter had slowed down as it approached its final date, but had frozen at 3955 when the power went out. There was no way of knowing how far it would have gone.
“Almighty God,” Maddox whispered. The man was slipping, and Brent knew it. Switching gears, he worked to focus his skipper’s attention on the positives.
“Well, we were following Taylor’s trajectory,” he said, scanning the horizon. “So whatever happened to us must have happened to him.”
“What about us?” Maddox said. “Where… where are we?”
Brent fumbled with the medical kit. “Well, in my opinion, skipper,” he said, trying to remember everything the scientists had told them, “we’ve passed through a Hasslein Curve, a bend in time.”
Focus on the positive, he reminded himself.
“I don’t know what planet we’re on, but the fact is, we’re both of us here, we’re breathing, we’re conscious, we got plenty of oxygen, water.” Brent paused and placed a rebreather over Maddox’s face. “Here.”
Maddox inhaled. He was slipping away, and Brent knew what he was thinking. Brent was here because of orders, but Maddox was here for another reason. He was here because of the Korean War. Taylor was his friend.
“Yeah, we’re gonna be alright, Skipper. We’re gonna be alright.” He needed to keep the man’s mind busy. Keep him from drifting off into despair. “As soon as you feel better, we’ll run a navigational estimate.”
“God,” Maddox muttered, “if I could only see the sun.”
Brent tilted his head. “It’s up there, alright. You can feel it.”
“Yes, but which sun?”
“I don’t know,” Brent admitted. “I don’t know.” Despite his intentions, frustration was beginning to grip him. “Our computer’s shot. We’re lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky?” Maddox mocked. “No. If it’s 3955 AD, I…” He trailed off. “Oh my God. My wife. My two daughters.” His eyes went wide. “Dead. Everyone I ever knew.”
His voice became a whisper.
“Everyone.”
* * *
Korea
1953
Shrapnel flew and tracers lit the sky.
Nineteen-year-old airman Donovan Maddox was in trouble, and Lieutenant George Taylor was the only one close enough to do something about it.
The acceleration of his F-86 Sabre’s jet engine threw Taylor back into his seat. Blood squeezed from his torso into his legs—he was seconds from passing out. Taylor launched a missile that the MiG tried to evade, but her Russian pilo
t jinked when he should have janked. The projectile disintegrated the enemy aircraft’s tail, sending it into a spin before it burst into a ball of flames.
“Taylor!” Maddox exclaimed. “I—”
“You’re good to go, Donny. Let’s take the rest of them.”
Maddox affirmed. As Taylor maneuvered his plane into formation, he noticed a sparkle out in his periphery. An instant later they were peppered with machine-gun fire. As shrapnel danced around his cockpit, Taylor looked for the source.
Three MiGs came at them from the sun. His canopy compromised, Taylor was completely reliant on his breathing apparatus to keep him from passing out. As one MiG took after Maddox, Taylor lined up another in his sights. His ammo was low, his guns nearly depleted. Weighing his options, he decided to use his last missile.
He pressed the firing stud; the rocket shot from his underbelly and went right up the MiG’s tail pipe. It continued through the engine, plowing through the fuselage and out the plane’s nose before igniting the entire craft. Pieces of the pilot ejected with the cockpit canopy as the plume scattered debris to the winds above contested soil.
The Cold War, Taylor thought mockingly. There’s nothing cold about jacketed metal tearing through a person. Nothing cold about a fiery death. He scanned the skyline, caught a flash in the distance, and checked his radar. It was Maddox taking out his assailant. Donny was back in the game.
“Good boy.”
On his instruments, a blip moved up behind him.
The MiGs, Taylor concluded. There were three. He and Donovan had only snagged two of them. The warning indicator lit up a second later.
Taylor pushed the stick low and hard, narrowly avoiding the incoming missile. As it skimmed over his canopy, he let loose with his machine gun, punching it and taking it out of the game with a flash and a thud. Then he dropped his Sabrejet down low and continued his maneuver through and around, completing the arc and looping back to confront his enemy.
While still more than a mile away, the MiG was on a collision course. Taylor lined up the Russian pilot for the kill and depressed his firing stud.
Nothing.
Guns are dry.
Even so, Taylor piloted his F-86 directly at his opponent, full thrust. He still had a chance to take the bastard with him.
The heavens opened.
Washed him with light.
Taylor saved his retinas by flipping his helmet visor down. Looking up, he located the source—something big, something glowing, and something aimed right at him. The light seared his cockpit. The fireball devoured the MiG. It claimed other planes, too. On both sides. Swooping jet fighters were incinerated, leaving only flaming shrapnel. The remaining planes scattered. Squinting, Taylor realized he was hurtling straight for oblivion.
He banked hard.
The comet sizzled.
Heat slammed him.
Taylor blacked out.
A nova filled the sky.
* * *
“Nova,” Taylor said.
He was trying to teach her to speak. They sat at the watering hole, washing up and replenishing their supplies. The horse welcomed the rest.
Again and again he said her name, then his. He showed her his rediscovered dog tags, pointing out the letters. While often met with a confused stare, Taylor did note that she pointed to him when he said his name. There was some semblance of recognition.
Gotta start somewhere, he mused. Might as well be at the bottom.
“Here.” He placed the dog tags around her neck. “There’s a prize.” He smiled. “You go to the head of the class.” Nova regarded the metal tag with fascination.
“Why don’t we just settle down and found a colony?” Taylor said mockingly. “All the kids’ll learn to talk. Sure they will.” He decided they had stayed long enough. The absurd was taking hold.
“Now, where in hell do we go from here?” Taylor looked to the heavens for hope.
“Well,” he said, “we might make it yet.”
Mounting up, they ventured anew.
* * *
Scant hours later, they reached a sharp incline. The horse gingerly made its way up the rocky climb, finally mounting its crest. Before them lay a desiccated riverbed.
Beyond that, a city buried in eons of sand. A place he had visited often. Where there had been lots of lovemaking, but no love. New York City. Specifically, Manhattan.
Back again, he reflected.
* * *
Ursus had returned.
A pious ape, he bowed as he entered the chapel. After every sojourn or campaign, he made his way here to give thanks to the Lawgiver. Later he would speak with Gaius and the council. He would see his Act passed. He would have his invasion, but first he would seek guidance.
First he would pray.
Helmet under arm, Ursus approached the altar to find that all was not as it should be. An orangutan doctor was there, putting his medical tools back into his sewn purse. Two gorillas were lifting a stretcher with a body on it—one covered in a holy purple cloth. Nearby, a group of female chimpanzees wept.
“Forgive me, Doctor,” Ursus said. “Who—?”
The doctor replied. “The reverend, General. The High Patriarch has passed. It was his time.”
The reverend had lived a long life—longer than most apes. Everyone had known his day would come soon. No one had expected it to be today, and there would be no expedient replacement. The clergy would deliberate for weeks. There would be political maneuvering and grandstanding, before ceremony itself would dictate who the new head of the Church would be.
“Has Dr. Zaius been informed?” he asked. As Chief Defender of the Faith, it would be Zaius’s duty to pull them through this difficult time.
“It’s my understanding that Dr. Zaius has gone on an expedition—” Ursus knew where, even before the doctor finished his sentence. “—into the Forbidden Zone.”
As the reverend’s body was carried past him, Ursus bowed his head in respect.
This might be apekind’s darkest hour.
The High Patriarch was dead.
The Defender of the Faith was absent.
They would have no spiritual guidance.
CHAPTER 7
WHAT LIES BENEATH
The Chrysler Building. The Empire State. He might as well have been staring at the pyramids. Taylor wanted to be stunned. Wanted to feel the same rage he had at seeing the twisted remnants of the Statue of Liberty. Yet he couldn’t.
He had nothing left.
Only the tallest sand-swept skyscrapers jutted from the earth, silent testament to man’s folly.
They might as well be tombstones.
From his vantage point, he guessed that they must be in what was left of Brooklyn. Greenpoint, maybe? The dried-up bed was the East River and beyond it, of course, Manhattan.
“Home sweet home.”
Taylor was talking to himself more and more now—not that Nova seemed to mind. In fact, she seemed enchanted by his voice. The one thing that made him different was the fact that he could talk. If he didn’t exercise that little gift, he might as well climb up a tree.
“Just look at this graveyard.” He made a sweeping motion with his arm. “The grand climax of fifty thousand years of human culture.” He turned to Nova, waiting for an acknowledgment of his joke. Of course, there would be none.
She goggled at the petrified skyscrapers, her whole body shaking, occasionally darting her eyes to and from Taylor.
She’s afraid, he realized. I’m being an ass. Again?
No. Still.
Thinking of the child she carried, Taylor realized there were more important things to worry about.
The child. His child.
After a pause, he reached back and put his arm on her thigh, comforting her.
“I wonder who lives here now…” He thought of the mutant boar and its maggot-riddled face. “Besides the radioactive worms.”
* * *
Why were these trespassers allowed to get so close to the city?
The beautiful woman wearing a blue stole stood at the rail above tracks 19–11. The vast concourse below was man-made, its smooth tiles accentuated at the far end by an incongruous splash of craggy lava stone. This was her people’s amphitheater, their senate chamber, and here their council held court to decide the course of an entire race. Once that council had consisted of seven members—now there were but five. As a lineage went extinct, it was irreplaceable.
Their bodies and minds forever altered by the long-term effects of radiation and natural selection, those who lived here were no longer human. Isolationists, these mutants were a patient, peace-loving people whose very flesh was sensitive to the light of the sun. They were robed in whites and tans accentuated with colored stoles to denote their guilds. Their skin was smooth and flawless, their hands were gloved, and their heads covered in wrappings that only exposed the flesh of their faces.
For millennia they had prevailed beneath this desolate Forbidden Zone. They waited here below the planet’s crust for the day the surface itself would once again be habitable. Until then they were content to wait and watch over their charge—the God almighty responsible for turning them into the beautiful beings they were.
They were its children. The epitome of their race.
The balustrade was normally reserved for His Holiness—Mendez XXVI. Their violet-stoled monarch was absent, however, sequestered away in the Corridor of Busts. That left only the four to confer. There was the yellow-adorned Ongaro, Albina with her blue shawl, the fat man in red called Adiposo, and the green-garbed and bespectacled Caspay. Their colored vestments were adorned with precious metals that had been forged in the fires of radiation.
While Mendez was in self-imposed isolation, Albina often lingered here. Mostly, the others deferred to her. All save for Caspay.
Years ago, before she had ascended to guildmaster, a youthful Albina had spurned him. The glasses-wearing mutant had sought an unnatural relationship that was taboo, and her adherence to scripture had finally forced him to withdraw. Ever since, vying for dominance, the elder statesman had been swift to reassert himself.
He approached her now, his expression dour. Albina turned, ready to be challenged. Instead, Caspay nodded his head once, relaying the details of the invader threat directly to her mind. Focusing on the upper world, she closed her eyes.
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