by Steve Alten
She staggered to the swivel exam chair and her overcoat. Hidden beneath her jacket was the polished wood case containing the vials of vaccine, exactly where she had left it.
Leigh heard the gunfire and panicked. They killed Clark, they’ll kill me, too! Gotta get this vaccine to the CDC in New Jersey… but how?
The thunder of the Special Ops helicopters diminished in the distance. The medevac chopper. Find the pilot… where would he be? Maybe upstairs in the lounge.
She cracked open the door to the isolation ward and looked down the corridor toward the nurses’ station. Three female nurses were lying on the floor, their wrists bound in plastic cuffs, as two commandoes pinned a male nurse — John Voyda — against a wall.
“Where’s the vaccine?”
The former collegiate football player glanced down the hall at Leigh and looked away quickly. “What vaccine? Nothing we tried works.”
A commando lifted one of the nurses off her feet and pressed the barrel of his assault rifle beneath her neck. “Tell us where Dr. Nelson is, or this nurse dies.”
“She left about an hour ago. I swear I haven’t seen her since.”
The other commando shook his head. “He’s lying. Take her out and shoot her, see if that jars his memory.”
Leigh darted from the room, sprinting for the stairwell.
“There she is! Freeze!”
She ducked low, yanked open the steel fire door, and raced up the steps to access the roof.
The two commandoes entered the stairwell, radioing ahead. “We’ve got her. Northern stairwell, heading for the roof.”
A bullet whizzed past her ear, then something bit her in the left calf muscle, and she went down.
The two black-clad militiamen stood over her.
“Please don’t kill me! I have two young children.”
“Get the case.”
One of the commandoes knelt to take the wooden kit from Leigh—
— the other screamed as a white-hot chunk of lead tore through the back of his left leg and exploded out his kneecap. “ Sonuvabitch —”
Patrick aimed the Glock at the second commando. “Drop the gun and move away from the doc. Now!”
“You’re making a big mistake, friend. You and me… we’re on the same side.”
“Shut up.” Shep kneed the man in his groin. As the commando doubled up in agony, he smashed him in the back of the head with the butt end of the gun.
Leigh leapt to her feet and hugged Shep around the neck. “Come on, baby doll, we need to get to the roof.” She grabbed the wooden case and limped up the stairwell.
Shep grabbed her arm, steadying her. “Doc, what’s happening? Who are these guys?”
“One of my patients, a redheaded woman we had in isolation, she released a man-made plague at the UN. Manhattan’s under quarantine. These assholes killed Dr. Clark. They’re after the vaccine.”
“So give it to them.”
“DeBorn’s people created this monster. You think I trust them with the only vaccine? We have to get this container to the CDC in New Jersey before this thing becomes a pandemic.”
“Jersey? How?”
“The medevac chopper. Shep, you’re a pilot, you can fly it!”
“No I can’t.”
“Yes you can!”
“No, I can’t. Leigh, my family’s in Battery Park, I need to find them before DeBorn kills them.”
She reached the roof, too winded to ask about DeBorn. “We’ll find your family. First fly me to Jersey.”
“I can’t—”
“Shep, listen to me. We need to harvest this vaccine. If we don’t, Bea, your daughter, and two million New Yorkers will be dead by tomorrow morning. Now come on.”
Leigh unbolted the roof fire door and pushed it open, greeted by a burst of frigid air. The wind swirled around them, the daylight fading fast. Bullets ricocheted inside the stairwell as a dozen more commandoes joined the hunt.
She slammed the door closed behind them. “Give me the gun. Take the vaccine and start the chopper. I’ll hold them off.”
He hesitated.
“Go!”
Patrick ran for the helopad and the Sikorsky S-76 Medevac helicopter. Climbing into the pilot’s seat, he tucked the wooden box between the copilot’s chair and the center console, then powered up the two five-hundred-kilowatt turboshafts.
Slowly, the four-blade main rotor came to life, gradually picking up speed.
Leigh cracked open the roof door, blindly squeezing off several rounds with the Glock in an attempt to slow the commandoes’ stairwell assault. Slamming the door shut, she looked around—
— spotting the fire hose mounted along the outside of the brick wall.
Dropping the gun, she grabbed the hose’s nozzle, dragged a twenty-foot length of the eight-hundred-pound test off its wheel, feeding it through the roof door’s steel handle.
* * *
Shep’s right hand gripped the cyclic control stick — a throttle used to steer the aircraft once the chopper was airborne. His feet were situated on the two rudder pedals on the floor, enabling him to control direction using the tail rotor.
Sweat beads poured down his face as he struggled to direct his prosthetic arm’s pincers to open, allowing him to grip a horizontal control stick located on the floor alongside his left hip. The collective pitch controlled the angle of the main rotor’s blades, enabling the chopper to ascend and descend. If he could not manipulate the stick, he could not take off. Worse, if he failed to coordinate the movements of his still-alien appendage with his other three working limbs once they were airborne, his actions could cause the chopper’s blades to spin down more than fifteen percent from their normal velocity, transforming the airship into a seven-thousand-pound rock.
Come on… open!
The rotors had reached their required rpm for liftoff. He signaled to Leigh with his right hand, still unable to open the pincers.
Pulling up the slack on the fire hose, Leigh looped the nozzle back through its wheel, tying it off in a knot. She ran toward the waiting chopper as the commandoes reached the top of the stairwell. They attempted to open the roof door, but the hose held.
Leigh Nelson was twenty feet from the helicopter when the door was blasted open and she was struck from behind by a burst of gunfire. She went down. Bullets ricocheted off gravel. A few struck the helicopter. Unable to move and in agony, the thirty-seven-year-old physician and mother of two looked up at Shep, her cry of “go” lost beneath the roar of the spinning rotors.
The wave of adrenaline coursed through Patrick Shepherd like an electric shock. Commanding the prosthetic pincers to open, he gripped the collective pitch and lifted it away from the floorboard, launching the airship off the roof in a sudden, dizzying forward lurch.
The commandoes aimed their assault rifles—
— the medevac chopper barely clearing the roof before it plunged out of sight.
Special Ops Commander Bryant Pfeiffer signaled his team to cease fire. Crossing the asphalt helopad, he jogged to the west end of the roof and looked down. “Damn.”
Three stories from the street, the helicopter’s rotors had caught air. For a moment it remained suspended above the fleeing crowd, then it slowly headed west, following East 25th Street, remaining well below the Manhattan skyline.
Pfeiffer switched channels on his two-way radio. “Delta One — Delta Six. Suspect has escaped with the Scythe vaccine in a medevac chopper. Target is heading west above East 25th Street, approaching Park Avenue. Intercept at once — repeat, intercept at once.”
The commander looked down at the disheveled figure of Leigh Nelson. The petite brunette was moaning, her battered body surrounded by a half dozen spent rubber bullets. “Gag her and bag her. I want her on the next transport to Governor’s Island.”
* * *
Swirling blades, threatened by lampposts and buildings. Metallic thunder echoed in his ears. Shep slowed his airspeed, matching the vehicular traffic moving thirty feet below his l
anding gear. He was afraid to risk a higher altitude, his pincers barely maintaining their grip on the collective pitch, and so he flew through a maze of skyscrapers, maneuvering west, then north, then west again. The blistering wind scattered pedestrians, the noise as deafening as a howitzer. He had passed midtown Manhattan above 40th Street when his pincers slipped. The chopper dropped precariously, the upper branches of elm trees in Bryant Park threatening his tail rotor.
Releasing the throttle, Shep lunged across his body with his right hand. Pushing the pincers down, he squeezed them into a locked position around the collective pitch and quickly raised the now-secure stick with his prosthetic arm.
The helicopter soared upward like an elevator past buildings and architectural spires. His right hand back on the throttle, Shep headed west, soaring high over Central Park, the Hudson River in sight, New Jersey only minutes away.
Land in Jersey just long enough to drop off the vaccine. Pocket a few vials for your family, then hightail it back to Manhattan. Bea lives in Battery Park. All I have to do is land this bucket of bolts on a nearby rooftop and—
The black airships appeared out of nowhere. Apaches. Flanking him from above. Two M230 machine guns swiveled into position beneath the military gunships, the menacing barrels aimed squarely at his cockpit. A house cat cornered by rottweilers.
“Easy, fellas, I’m on your side.” He held up the vaccine kit.
The pilot in the Apache on his starboard side signaled him to land.
Shep offered a thumbs-up, stalling for time as he descended at a shallow angle, his chopper still heading west toward the Hudson River. Don’t let ’em force you down in Manhattan. Get out over the water. He saw the George Washington Bridge to the north and headed for the landmark.
The air ripped apart behind two hundred 30mm rounds spit from the starboard Apache’s turret, the bursts crossing his path, forcing him into a steeper descent. Heart thumping with the rotors, Shep eased down on the collective pitch, the medevac rattling dangerously as he fought to maintain control in the rough air over the Hudson shoreline.
Land, and they’ll kill you or capture you. Either way, you’ll never see your family again. Desperate, descending fast, he scanned the geography below, his eyes focusing on the George Washington Bridge…
* * *
“Easy, don’t push, I need to turn her.” Sliding his gloved fingers deeper along either side of Naomi Gutierrez’s fully dilated vaginal opening, David Kantor gently maneuvered the unborn infant’s tiny shoulders. “Okay, one more good push.”
A moist blotch of matted black hair squeezed through the widening womb, the crown preceding a tiny head and scrunched face guided gently by a latex-covered palm, then suddenly, miraculously, emotionally, the entire squirming purplish pink eight-pound, ten-ounce body squeezed free of the opening, dangling two legs and trailing a twisting length of umbilical cord.
“Congratulations, it’s a boy!” David’s mask fogged up as he cradled the infant. Using a moistened towelette, he cleared the newborn’s airway with his little finger. A gurgling wail turned into a baby’s healthy cry, the infant’s purple face flushing pink with the infusion of air. Stephanie Collins wrapped the newborn in a blanket, the teary-eyed corporal passing the baby to its weeping mother.
“Gracias… gracias.”
“Mazel tov.” David had turned his attention to the umbilical cord and emerging placenta—
— when the sound of gunfire erupted like the Fourth of July.
“Damn it.” Quickly tying off the chord, he severed it with the blade of his pocketknife, then peeled off the bloodied rubber gloves. “Corporal, stay with the mother—”
“Sir… your hands!”
“Oh, yeah, right.” David slipped on the environmental suit’s gloves and jumped down from the back of the truck. Leaving his assault weapon, he ran toward the gauntlet… stopping halfway across the expanse of interstate, panting in his rebreather as all hell broke loose.
Cold, hungry, angry, and desperate with fear, the pedestrian mob positioned directly behind the razor wire and concrete barriers were shooting at the Freedom Force. The Freedom Force were tossing gas grenades… and the National Guardsmen were caught in the cross fire. Some crawled to cover. Others joined their countrymen and fired upon the foreign militia, and suddenly it was war, blood spilling and bodies falling, and that was it, there was no turning back, as drivers gunned their engines and honked their horns, signaling the launch of an all-out assault. The front rows of vehicles rammed the concrete barriers, only to be met by the lethal barrage of heavy artillery.
Cars exploded, igniting like gasoline-powered bombs, torching passengers whose fate had been determined hours earlier by their place in line.
The second wave of vehicles plowed into the back of the first, pushing the burning debris forward, driving it beyond the two-ton barriers into the bumpers of the Hummers, and all of a sudden it was a demolition derby, the gauntlet’s survival measured in seconds.
Through the chaos, David spotted Colonel Herstad. The militia commander was lying on the roadway, covered in blood—
— yelling orders into his walkie-talkie.
David’s eyes went wide. “No… no!” He sprinted back to the military vehicle. Climbing inside the cab, he gunned the engine, tossing his stunned passengers about as he raced the truck west over the George Washington Bridge.
* * *
The two Apaches herded the slowly descending medevac helicopter toward a patchwork of tennis courts located south of the bridge between the river and the Henry Hudson Parkway.
Now!
Shep plunged into a sudden steep descent, looping away from the two gunships and out over the water. Whitecaps sprayed his windshield as he leveled out, the choppy surface less than ten feet below his landing gear. Wind whipped at his cockpit as he soared west over the waterway—
— the Apaches cutting him off, forcing him to loop north on an intercept course with the undercarriage of the George Washington Bridge!
Shep dropped his altitude until his landing gear skimmed the lead blue water, guiding the chopper beneath the suspension bridge’s lower deck. An echo of rotors rattled his eardrums, then he was out the other side—
Boom… boom… boom!
Sound disappeared behind a hollow ring, the December air heated as suddenly as if the sun had swapped places with the moon, igniting blinding orange bursts of incinerating fireballs that mushroomed into the heavens. Steel girders basted with thermite-laced paint exploded into white-hot flames exceeding five thousand degrees, melting metal girders and support cables as if they were butter in a microwave. Thick belches of black smoke partially concealed a section of westbound Interstate 95 as the liquefying upper level collapsed upon the still-erupting lower deck, the entire midsection of the George Washington Bridge and its sixteen lanes of highway toppling into the Hudson River—
— the avalanche of sizzling steel taking the two Apache helicopters with it!
Debris slammed into the sides and tail section of the fleeing medevac chopper like hail from a flaming meteor. The pedals beneath Shep’s feet went limp as the tail rotor snapped into kindling, and the main rotor fought to catch air as he soared north over the Hudson like a fluttering pelican. Fighting to maintain altitude, Shep yanked back hard on the collective pitch, sending his chopper leaping into the overcast sky in a dizzying tailspin, the river disappearing below, replaced by a hillside covered in trees.
The angle of his rotors violated the rules of aerodynamics. With a sickening lurch, the medevac helicopter plunged landing gear first through the forest canopy, the snapping branches tearing great gashes through the plummeting airship. Rotors sheared, cockpit glass shattered, the unforgiving earth greeting him with a final, bone-rattling wallop that collapsed the interior compartment around him.
Chaos deadened into settling metallic ticks, then silence.
A cold, harsh wind whistled through the violated cabin.
Patrick Shepherd opened his eyes. Through the ha
ze he could make out dark pillars, each a massive tree trunk. The roots were knotted with age, partially buried beneath a blanket of dead leaves and a patchwork of snow.
A downed sign leaned against his crippled landing gear. He struggled to bring the words into focus.
welcome to inwood hill park
He turned his head, sensing another presence lurking in the shadows. The lanky figure’s head and body were cloaked in a dark robe. Hollowed eyes stared. Waiting.
The vision disappeared, absorbed within the blackness of unconsciousness.
PART 3
Upper Hell
“There are nine circles in Hell, each corresponding to the seriousness of the sins of the damned souls, in the lowest of which is Satan himself, frozen forever in ice.”
— Dante's Inferno
First Circle
Limbo
“About halfway through the course of my pathetic life, I woke up and found myself in a stupor in some dark place. I’m not sure how I ended up there; I guess I had taken a few wrong turns.”
— Dante’s Inferno
December 20
Inwood Hill Park
Manhattan
7:37 P.M.
(12 hours, 16 minutes before the prophesied End of Days)
Darkness. Absolute. Impenetrable, save for a howl of wind, its biting cold convincing him he might be blind but he was not dead. He struggled to move. Something was pinning him down by his shoulders and waist and left arm. The claustrophobic suddenness of the situation triggered a hot flush of panic even as a strand of memory forced him to reason.
The medevac chopper…
His eyes widened. He craned his neck to see past a ceiling of black yielding to a patch of cloud-infested lunar light. The panic subsided. Replaced by a dawning recognition: He was strapped in his pilot’s seat. He was in a dense forest. It was night.
Wind whistled through the vented acrylic glass, biting his flesh, the frigid air seeping bone deep. Unseen oaks, their creaking branches made brittle from winter’s embrace, clawed against the shattered cockpit.
