by Simon Clark
We were within a hundred yards of the Empire State when a girl with a rifle stepped out.
'Sacramento!' She aimed the rifle at my chest.
'Berlin!' The word was past my lips before I'd even realized I'd said it.
She nodded. 'OK. Stay here.' Then she turned to Gabriel. 'The Marines are going in now, sir. They were held up by triffids for a while in the south.'
'Where on earth did all these damn monsters come from?'
'There was a change of plan, sir. As well as blowing the bridge gates the engineers managed to open up the tunnels under the river.'
'Good God… that means the triffids are pouring up out of the ground inside the city.'
'That seems a damn cynical tactic to me,' I said. 'Those people out on the street hadn't got a chance. Or do we write that slaughter off as just another bloody accident?'
Gabriel's eyes became hard. 'There are some who would call this payback time.'
I looked back along Fifth Avenue and realized that any discussion about the morality of the Foresters' actions would have to wait. The nearest triffid was maybe a couple of hundred yards away. What was more, it seemed to be taking a particular interest in us. 'I don't think it's going to be too healthy for us to stand around here any longer,' I said.
A colossal explosion drowned out whatever reply Gabriel had intended to make.
I turned to see smoke billowing from the bottom of the Empire State. Gabriel gave me a grim look. 'They're going in,' he told me. Then he ran towards the massive building that was both Torrence's headquarters and his imperial palace.
I hadn't come this far to hide in a shop doorway. I followed - just as the shooting started.
CHAPTER FORTY TWO
FIRE FIGHT
SQUADS of the Foresters' Marines emerged from behind cars or from doorways to race towards the foot of the enormous building. By now the smoke had cleared sufficiently for me to see that a pair of doors had been blasted inward. Through this opening the Marines charged. They fired short bursts from their automatic weapons, clearing whatever opposition met them.
My party swiftly pulled firearms from bags and cases as they moved forward. Gabriel Deeds flicked open the catches of the guitar case. He lifted out his sub-machine gun, then hoisted the satchel full of hand grenades over his shoulder.
I glanced back to see more of the huge triffids. These things moved with an awful majesty, their sixty-foot stems swaying with all the grace and menace of a giant cobra while their cones swept left and right as if scanning the street. With consummate accuracy the stings cracked through the air to claim yet another victim. Even as I watched a man was incautious enough to look from an open third-storey window. The sting found his face. He toppled forward to the ground, his scream echoing along the street.
It seemed that we had made an alliance with the devil himself. But I had little time to ponder the morality of the Foresters' actions in unleashing these monsters onto the streets of Manhattan. Ahead lay the shattered doorway. The bullet-ravaged corpse of a Marine lay slumped across the timbers.
Seconds later I followed Gabriel into the building. Marni stayed close by my side. This was no place for her, but at the same time I couldn't leave her to the tender mercies of the killer plants outside.
Inside the building chaos was king. People were running everywhere. Some fired weapons. Some fled for their lives. In this confined space the racket of gunfire and the thunder of grenades felt loud enough to smash my skull. Blue smoke misted the air. Beneath it men and women lay dead or wounded.
I took refuge behind a sofa. Gabriel and Marni crouched beside me.
We were in a large entrance hall. I'd been here before when I had visited Torrence with Kerris. There were the same statues of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Hadrian, all interspersed with potted ferns that formed clumps of greenery.
Now I could make out the pattern of attack. Marines advanced in small teams of five or six, leapfrogging forward, as it were. One team would rush forward and secure an objective. The team following that one would then advance to secure the next, and so on.
Machine guns spat back from those clumps of ferns that must have concealed Torrence's guard. A fact confirmed when a Marine tossed a grenade into the greenery. The explosion blasted away leaves to reveal a low, thick-walled concrete structure, a pillbox. From slits in the sides gun muzzles disgorged streams of bullets.
Marines went down like ninepins. Blood flooded across carpets.
'Hell,' Gabriel breathed. 'We're taking one heck of a beating.'
'What now?'
'Push the sofa forward. Keep it square to the pillbox… and for heaven's sake keep down.'
The three of us wheeled the sofa forward. As a bulletproof barrier between those big-calibre machine guns and us it was more than a little flimsy. At best the gunners within the pillbox simply might not notice our advance amid the carnage.
When we were within thirty paces of the pillbox Gabriel pulled out something like a Very flare pistol that had an unusually wide gun barrel. He clicked a bulbous-looking shell into its breech.
'Keep your heads down.'
He fired the grenade pistol at the pillbox. The missile hit the concrete flank where it exploded with a fierce roar.
'Damn, I'm getting the shakes.' Reloading, he took a deep breath, then fired again. This time the missile cannoned through an opening in the concrete. I took a cautious look in time to see the detonation shake white dust from the pillbox's exterior. Immediately, smoke poured from the gun slits; the machine guns inside fell silent at last.
At that moment a hand slapped Gabriel on the shoulder. 'Good shooting, Gabe.'
I turned to see Sam Dymes giving him a grim smile. 'If we can secure the lobby then we're nearly there.' Sam nodded at me. 'I see you've joined the team?'
'I've got some business here too, Sam.'
'I'm more glad than I can say that you're here, David. It looks like we're going to need everyone who can fire a gun.' His hand went to his elbow where a red stain was spreading through the shirt material. 'Just a grenade splinter. I should have learned to throw the damn things further.' He gave a rueful shake of his head. 'Hoist by my own petard, as the old saying goes.'
From a staircase in front of us came a swarm of black-uniformed figures.
'Someone called out the Guard,' Gabriel murmured.
I raised the submachine gun and fired a burst at the group of heavily armed men. Several of them pitched forward to roll down the staircase. Gabriel fired another of his pistol grenades. The blast felled yet more.
At that moment I saw a flicker of green from the corner of my eye. One of our sappers lurched forward, clutching the side of his neck. With an ear-stabbing yell he collapsed writhing on the floor.
I looked back to see that a young triffid had found its way into the building. Little more than seven feet tall it was still lethal. I turned to give it a short burst, the bullets shredding the cone, leaving it and the sting in tatters.
'We've triffids coming in at our backs,' I shouted. 'We've got to get out of the lobby.'
Sam's expression was grim. 'Looks like we're between the devil and the deep blue sea.'
He was right. In front of us black-uniformed Guardsmen were pushing into the lobby. While behind us, the street outside seemed to have sunk beneath some kind of enchanted forest - if 'enchanted' was the right word. Where there had been concrete sidewalks, bare walls, and blacktop swamped with gridlocked cars now there was a swathe of jungle-like greenery as triffids engulfed Manhattan.
I pointed to a corridor off the lobby. 'There's an elevator there,' I shouted. 'Take that.'
'We haven't secured the lobby yet.'
'Leave it to Torrence's men and the triffids to slug it out. Come on!'
I ran from behind the sofa. Behind me came Gabriel, Marni and Sam. By the time we arrived at the elevator a pair of Marines toting heavy-duty machine guns had joined us.
Gabriel looked at the elevator with suspicion. 'What if this thin
g's been shut down?'
'There's one way to find out.' I pulled at the door. It slid open to reveal a calm mahogany interior. Mirrors reflected our smoke-stained faces back at us.
'Inside, quick.'
There wasn't a moment to lose. A door swung open nearby to reveal the surprised face of a guard. He swung up his rifle but our Marines were faster. They blasted the man where he stood. But more men appeared from inside the room, firing in our direction.
With everyone inside the elevator I pulled the door shut. It was one of the old manual lifts. Instead of punching buttons that matched a floor number, there was simply a wheel that swung either way to a stencilled Up and Down, I spun the wheel. With a shudder the elevator began to ascend at a stately pace.
A little too stately. A shadowy figure appeared at the other side of the glazed door to fire a handgun through the glass. I fired a burst back to spoil his aim.
A second later the elevator had climbed out of harm's way.
Holding his bloody elbow, Sam Dymes managed a weak smile as he nodded at the shattered mirror behind him. 'That's seven years' bad luck for some poor devil.'
Slowly, timbers creaking, the venerable old elevator took us higher and higher. A glance round told me that with the exception of Sam's elbow wound we were all unscathed. Marni looked at me, her green eyes serious yet determined. I handed her an automatic pistol. Checking that the safety was off, I told her, 'If you should need this when we get out, just point and shoot. OK?'
She nodded.
Gabriel and the Marines seized the temporary respite to reload their weapons. I followed suit, snapping a fresh magazine into my sub-machine gun.
Sam nodded up at the ascending hand that indicated the floor numbers. 'We need to make for the ninetieth floor… but be ready. Something tells me we might have a reception committee waiting for us.'
'Then bypass it for the ninety-first,' I told him. 'With luck they won't be expecting us there. Then we can walk down to the next floor.'
'Good idea.' Sam grimaced as he flexed his injured arm. 'Does anyone know how to control this thing?'
Marni nodded and stepped forward to the control wheel.
'OK, we get out at the ninety-first.' Sam drew a pistol from his belt. 'But if those guys of Torrence's are in a trigger-happy frame of mind, then they might just put a whole mess of lead through the door as we pass by. So stand back against the side walls of the elevator… no, not at the back of elevator. Here, at either side of the door.'
Then came the waiting. The indicator above the door pointed to the eighty-first… slowly it moved up to the eighty-second.
Now the sounds of the battle in the lobby below had receded. In the elevator, along with the creaks of cables and pulleys I could hear the sounds of my companions' ragged breathing.
It was a strange interlude. There was no plan for the coming combat that I could run through my mind. All I could do was stand and wait for whatever happened next.
'OK, brace yourselves.' Sam's voice was tight with tension. 'We're coming up to the ninetieth.'
Through the cracked glazing of our elevator door the block of darkness gave way to a band of light as we came up to the ninetieth floor. I had expected a burst of gunfire through the elevator doors.
Nothing. The elevator rumbled upward.
Marni stopped the elevator on the next floor. The marines were out first, standing back to back, their machine guns at the ready. Then they waved us out. I found myself in a passageway with offices opening off. So far, the place appeared to be empty. A sign directed us towards the stairs.
On the way the Marines kicked open any door they deemed suspicious. Inside one, half a dozen office workers were hiding behind a line of filing cabinets.
'Don't shoot!' cried a grey haired man.
'We won't shoot if you don't shoot us,' Sam replied civilly. 'Do you have any guns?'
'No, sir. We're only filing clerks.'
'Filing clerks, eh?'
'Yes, sir.'
'You seen any Guardsmen on this floor?'
'No, sir.'
'You telling me the truth, mister?' Sam rested the pistol muzzle in the crook of his bloody arm.
The grey-haired man raised his hands higher, then cast anxious glances at his colleagues. 'Well… er, I did see some Guardsmen in the stairwell, they-'
'How many? And where, exactly?'
'Four. They were carrying a machine gun on a tripod. Er, they were taking it down the stairwell right at the end of this corridor.'
'Thank you,' Sam said with genuine courtesy. 'I'm sorry if I alarmed you and your colleagues.' Before leaving the office he added, 'Oh, and I recommend you sit tight behind those cabinets. And don't do anything stupid like making any telephone calls. Got that?'
'Indeed, sir. Thank you.'
We returned to the corridor. Sam spoke to the Marines who then took the lead as we moved in Indian file towards the stairs.
When the stairwell was in sight, the Marines gestured for us to stay back a little. Then they each pulled the pins from grenades that they lobbed underarm down the stairs. Before the crash of the explosions I heard a startled shout. After that there was only silence. The Marines ran forward to fire machine guns at some target down the stairs, then signalled us to follow them. I saw a heavy machine gun tipped from its tripod at the turn of the stairs. A number of bloody bodies lay prone.
'See that the old guy gets mentioned in dispatches,' Sam said, smiling grimly. 'He saved our bacon.'
On the marble steps we picked our way through a crimson mess that was as slippery as engine oil, all of us having to grip the stair-rail hard to prevent ourselves from slithering down onto our rear ends. Nevertheless, we were soon in the corridor below where we made good use of the expensive carpet to wipe the soles of our boots.
A sign informed us that we were on the ninetieth floor. It was uncannily silent here, too. I found myself glancing out through a window to see the sun dropping low over an apparently calm Manhattan, the evening rays reflecting redly in the windows of the office blocks.
'Keep moving,' a Marine hissed. 'I'll watch your backs.'
With one Marine in the lead and one guarding our tail we moved along the corridor. Torrence had been busy here. Offices had been converted into a self-contained hospital. I glimpsed scrubbed tiles and the massive overhead light of an operating theater.
That was the moment when points of light suddenly appeared at either side of my head, streaking away past me down the corridor.
Instantly I dropped to one knee. Looking back, I saw a pair of black-uniformed guardsmen firing automatic rifles at us. The Marine guarding our tail had caught the worst of it. His lifeless body lay face down in the corridor. Squeezing the trigger of my own gun, I hosed the men with sub-machine gun rounds. More wildly fired shots ripped plaster from the walls in clouds of white dust.
Blinking dust from my eyes, I saw the two men crumple to the ground.
'Move it!' hollered the Marine in front. He charged forward down the corridor. We followed.
A moment later he burst into a lobby. Straightaway I saw a line of black-uniformed figures manning a makeshift barricade of upended desks, filing cabinets and cupboards. Strangely, though, they were on the same side of the barricade as us, not, as you might think, on the other.
'Drop your weapons,' Gabriel shouted. 'Drop them.'
Some chose not to.
A well-aimed shot from Marni's pistol sent one of the men rolling back against a desk, both his hands gripping his throat.
I fired in short bursts, bullets stripping away chunks of wood from the desktops. But a number of rounds found softer targets. Black-uniformed figures jerked like marionettes with their strings cut before dropping to the ground. Other Guardsmen took the second option.
Shouting at the tops of their voices, they threw aside their guns and raised their hands. Gabriel moved forward, ordering the surviving Guardsmen to lie down on the floor with their arms outstretched. I noticed that he limped, and he left a b
loody footprint on the carpet. A glance at Sam Dymes told me that a bullet had nicked his chin. Gradually, a red beard formed around his lower jaw. But he didn't look too badly injured, considering, and he moved forward to talk to the Marine.
At that moment, I realized that my left ear seemed oddly cold, as if a piece of ice had been pressed to it. To my surprise its upper third had simply vanished. My fingers, when I looked at them, glistened crimson, too. I looked down at my right arm. It was dotted with tiny wounds from each of which hung a pearl of blood. Luckily, I felt no pain in the arm and when I moved it experimentally it functioned well enough.
It took some minutes to move the surviving Guardsmen and their wounded into a storeroom. I noticed a telephone in the corner and took the liberty of tearing it from the wall before locking the men in.
Once our small and increasingly blood-soaked team had re-assembled in the lobby Sam said in a low voice, 'I don't see any alternative now but to go straight over that barricade.'
'You figure that Kerris and Christina are still here?'
'That's what the most recent information tells us.'
Gabriel looked at us. 'Everyone reloaded?'
We nodded.
'OK,' Sam whispered. 'Let's do it.'
We ran at the wall of upended furniture. At that moment my arm decided it was a good time to start hurting. Grunting, teeth clenched, I scrambled over the barricade to slither down the other side.
I was greeted by the sight of a second line of upended tables that had been pulled around the end of a corridor to form yet another barrier. Great… just great, I thought, as my nervous system settled down to flashing pain signals bright and clear to my long-suffering conscious mind. Holding the sub-machine gun in one hand, I lumbered forward. Just then the muzzle of a rifle appeared over a table, and I found myself looking along the barrel to a pair of green eyes framed by red hair.
