by Steve Alten
The scent of the smoldering bridge remained overpowering.
Patrick and Virgil hurried past the bridge’s eastern foundation, keeping low behind the Henry Hudson Parkway’s central divider. Beyond the labyrinth of off-ramps connecting the ruptured expanse, they climbed over a four-foot concrete barrier to access the northbound lanes, then over a steel guardrail onto the 158th Street exit ramp. Deserted, the winding road was a steep and steady climb. The two men continued their trek, their breaths visible in the chilled air.
“Virgil, back at the hospital, you said everything has a cause and effect.”
“Fix the cause, and you’ll fix the effect.”
“And how do you fix all this? People are dying by the thousands. DeBorn and his ilk are manipulating the world into another war. How can you fix so much evil?”
“A timeless question. Am I responding as a psychiatrist or as a spiritual counselor?”
“I don’t care, I just need to know.”
The old man continued walking, weighing his response. “I’m going to give you an answer, but you won’t like it. Evil serves a purpose. It makes the choice of good possible. Without evil, there could be no transformation — transformation being the desire to change one’s nature from the selfish to the selfless.”
“What kind of esoteric bullshit is that? God, I actually thought you were tuned in. Is that what you’d tell a grieving mother whose kid was gunned down in the street?”
“No. It’s the response I’m offering the soldier who pulled the trigger.”
The road spun out from under him, a sudden vertigo that forced Patrick to his knees on the concrete ramp. His chest constricted. He fought to breathe. “Who… told… you? DeBorn?”
“Does it really matter?”
“The father was angry… he was running at me. The Farsi, I couldn’t remember what to say, I was trained to react. I didn’t want to kill him! I didn’t have a choice.”
“Do you honestly believe that?”
Shep shook his head. “I should have ended it right then… my life for the boy’s father. Instead… oh, God!” The dam burst, raking his body in convulsions, his anguish flowing into a night already heavy in despair.
“Suicide is not transformation, Patrick. It’s blasphemy.” Virgil sat down next to Shep and placed an arm around his shoulder. “The incident, it happened how long ago?”
“Eight years, three months.”
“And you anguish over these deaths to this day?”
“Yes.”
“Then there is some justice. What is lacking is transformation.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You asked me about evil, why God allows it to exist. The more important question is why does any of this exist? What is man’s true purpose? What if I told you that everything that surrounds us — this ramp, this city, the planet — everything you refer to as the physical universe represents a mere one percent of existence, created for one purpose… as a challenge.”
“A challenge for who? Man?”
“Man is just a vessel, designed to be fallible.” Virgil winced. “My back is stiffening, help me up.”
Shep slid his right arm around the older man’s thick waist, assisting him to his feet. With a grunt, the old man continued walking up the long, winding highway off-ramp.
“Every being possesses a soul, Patrick, and every soul is a spark of the Creator’s Light. God’s Light is pure, intended for only one purpose — to give. The soul is pure, intended for only one purpose — to receive the Light’s endless fulfillment. To receive the Light requires desire. To be more like the Creator, the soul desired to earn its endless fulfillment. That required a challenge. And here we are.”
“That’s your answer? Here we are?”
“There’s more to it than that, and I’ll tell you more when I think you are ready. For now, understand that man’s ego taints the soul’s desire to receive. Ego is the absence of Light. It leads to reactive behavior — violence, lust, greed, jealousy. The story you told me about the soldiers molesting that girl… it’s an example of what happens when the Light of God is cut off from the soul, allowing the negative forces to run amok.”
“You should have seen them. The look in their eyes… the anger.”
“Anger is the most dangerous trait of the human ego. It allows one to be taken over by the darker forces. Like lust, anger is an animal response. It can only be corrected through selfless acts that expand one’s vessel to receive more of God’s Light.”
“But people who have sinned… aren’t they forbidden from accessing the Light?”
“Not at all. Transformation is available to everyone, no matter how evil the deed. Unlike man, the Creator feels unconditional love for all His children.”
“Wait. So Hitler can exterminate six million Jews, but as long as he asks for forgiveness, then everything’s cool? Come on.”
“Transformation has nothing to do with asking for forgiveness or saying ten Hail Marys, or fasting. Transformation is an act of selflessness. What you did in Iraq, you’ll be judged for in Gehenom.”
“Gehenom is Hell, right?”
“It can be for some. Just remember, every act of kindness completed before your last breath can help ease the cleansing process after you move on.”
“So how do I transform?”
“For starters, stop being a victim. You weren’t created to be miserable. By wallowing in misery, you’re veiling God’s Light. Surely there must be something you desire?”
“Honestly, the only thing I desire is to see my family again.”
“There’s a reason you’re apart, Patrick. You need to resolve the cause to overcome the effect. Until you can do that…” The wind picked up, bringing with it a driving rain. The old man glanced up at the heavens, then ahead, where the ramp ended at a highway underpass. “There’s shelter up ahead.”
The ramp had brought them to Manhattanville. Ahead lay 158th Street, the deserted road cresting before them, running through a massive arch belonging to a highway overpass. Someone had spray-painted graffiti on its concrete wall, the red letters still dripping:
Welcome to Hell.
Abandon all hope upon entering.
Third Circle
Gluttons
“Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow pour from the dismal air to putrefy the putrid slush that waits them below. And they too howl like dogs in the freezing storm, turning and turning from it as if they thought one naked side could keep the other warm."
— Dante’s Inferno
December 20
158th Street Ramp
Manhattanville, Manhattan
10:06 P.M.
(9 hours, 57 minutes before the prophesied End of Days)
The rain became a driving sleet. Patrick and Virgil sought shelter beneath the concrete arch — the massive foundation supporting Riverside Drive. Situated within the underpass was a garage, part of a maintenance system run by New York’s Department of Transportation.
Entering the garage revealed a vast cavernous substratum formed by the roadway overhead. Steel girders framed a ceiling five stories high. A gravel access road disappeared into the dark recess before them. The wind howled through the tunnel, causing Shep to shiver uncontrollably, his rain-soaked sweater all but useless against the December cold front.
A small windowed office lay dark and vacant on their left. Virgil tried the door. Finding it unlocked, he entered, returning a moment later carrying a black ski parka. “Put this on.”
“Too small. I c-c-can’t get it over the p-p-prosthetic.”
Virgil stretched the jacket’s left sleeve in front of him. “Use your prosthetic blade. Cut the left sleeve, so your appendage can slip through the hole.”
With one downward swipe, Patrick slashed through the material at the elbow, sending goose down feathers flying.
Virgil held the altered garment for Patrick. Guiding the end of his deformed steel arm into the tailored left sleeve, Shep managed to work the alpine
ski jacket over his shoulders, the old man helping him with the zipper. “Better?”
“Much better. Virgil, listen.”
The wind had died down, allowing them to hear a woman’s cry for help, the desperate plea echoing in the darkness.
“Come on!” Shoving the vaccine container inside his ski jacket, Patrick raced into the bowels of the underground structure, Virgil trailing behind.
The tunnel continued for several hundred yards, dead-ending where the ceiling tapered down to meet a concrete retaining wall and a descending stairwell, lit by a fading emergency light. Three rottweilers were bound by their leashes to the step’s iron rail, preventing anyone from using the exit. The animals’ chains had become entangled, pinning the vicious black-and-tan guard dogs side by side. Their lathered fangs remained out of reach of the woman.
She was in her late fifties, Caucasian and rotund. Stripped down to her underwear, she was standing chest deep in a pit of mud created by one of the drainage pipes, which had cracked open, depositing its refuse around the stairwell.
Seeing Patrick and Virgil, the woman immediately began to vent. “Well, it’s about time, I’ve only been screaming for help for twenty minutes. First they stole my jewelry. Then they took my air mask, which cost me five thousand dollars. Then the little bastards stripped me down to my bra and panties and left me here to die.”
The snarling dogs barked at Patrick as he approached the woman—
— their bodies morphing together in his mind’s eye, melding into a single three-headed beast… Cerberus! The mythical hound of Hades rears on its hind legs, its multiple mouths snapping at Patrick, saliva flying from its lathering jowls.
Shep backed away, the surroundings spinning in his vision—
— the cement wall becoming a long, concrete-block corridor, barred steel doors on either side. The prisoners huddle together on the floor at the end of the hall. The guards are laughing, barely restraining the three guard dogs. The rottweilers tug at their choker leashes, growling at the terrified, naked Iraqi prisoners.
The Intelligence Officer turns to Shep. “We call this ‘fearing up’ the detainees. The interrogators appreciate it. They say it helps loosen their lips.”
“What did they do?”
“Who cares? Our job is to put the fear of Jesus in ’em for the Gitmo boys. That one, drag his fat ass over here.”
Shep grabs the Iraqi by his elbow, separating the frightened man from the group.
The Intelligence Officer shoves the barrel of his sidearm in the man’s ear. “Smitty, tell him to grab his ankles. Tell him if he let’s go, I’ll blow his brains out. Shepherd, when I tell you to, I want you to beat this Arab dog across his back with the rubber hose.”
“Sir… I don’t think I can.”
“Think? Who asked you to think? I’m giving you an order, Sergeant.”
“Shepherd, these orders come directly from the defense secretary’s office. We do our jobs over here, and we prevent another 9/11 back home. Is that so hard to understand? Now pick up the fucking hose. Go on, Smitty — tell him!”
The private contractor from Titan Corporation issues commands in Farsi to his prisoner. Quivering in fear, the heavyset Iraqi bends over and grabs his ankles.
“Shepherd, now — beat his terrorist ass!”
Patrick hesitates then lashes the forty-one-year-old taxi driver and father of five across his hairy back with the rubber hose.
“What are you, a Muslim lover? Hit him, Sergeant! That’s it! Beat him like a mule.” The MI Officer winks at the private contractor as he removes the cigarette from his mouth and stubs it out in the detainee’s left ear.
The Iraqi man howls in pain. Fearful of releasing his ankles and being shot, the prisoner falls forward, smashing his head against the unforgiving tile floor, knocking himself out.
The Intel Officer and private contractor break out in hysterics.
Shep backs away from the injured man, the dogs barking and snapping—
— one rottweiler suddenly gagged. Another followed suit, then the last — all three animals choking at something lodged in their throats.
“Patrick, are you all right? Patrick—”
Shep shook the memory of Abu Ghraib from his vision until he was again standing in the underground maintenance shaft. Virgil was by his side, his right hand caked in mud.
The three dogs were gagging, their mouths filled with the muck.
The heavyset woman was on her feet. Wallowing past the dogs, she disappeared down the concrete stairwell, leaving a trail of sewage and mud.
Virgil looked at Shep, who appeared pale and shaken. “Another hallucination?”
“A bad memory.”
“Tell me.”
Patrick stared at the dogs, the scene still vivid in his mind’s eye. “My second deployment… I was assigned to Abu Ghraib prison as a systems administrator — basically a glorified computer guy. The new guys got relegated to the night shift. That’s where a lot of things happened.”
“By ‘things,’ you mean torture?”
Shep nodded. “I was forced to participate. When I complained, I was told to shut my mouth and do my job. Things got worse when the spooks arrived from Guantanamo. Sick bastards. They’d use sleep deprivation… playing children’s nursery rhymes nonstop around the clock, it drove the inmates insane. Sometimes they’d handcuff a prisoner in painful contortions and leave him like that for hours. I never saw it myself, but I heard about the waterboarding. A few times the spooks went too far and drowned the detainee. When that happened, they’d toss the dead man’s remains in a body bag and order us to dump it somewhere during the night.”
“But that’s not what haunts your dreams.”
Shep shook his head, his eyes misty. “There was an Iraqi flag officer, Hamid Zabar. To get him to talk, the spooks brought in his sixteen-year-old son. They tortured the officer’s kid while he was forced to watch… while I was forced to watch.”
Patrick regains his composure. “I was stationed there for six months. A few of us managed to leak the details back home. After a while, there was an inquiry. I was back in New York at the time and offered to testify, but they refused to bring me in. The whole investigation was a sham, designed to appease the media and the American public while placing the blame on a few ‘bad apples,’ all noncommissioned officers, even though our commander in chief had authorized the use of torture. Nothing about Rumsfeld, who had encouraged the worst of it, or his deputy henchman, Paul Wolfowitz, who saw it for himself, or Major General Geoffrey Miller, the man Rumsfeld sent over to turn Abu Ghraib into Gitmo East. None of the guilty were ever charged or disciplined, only schmucks like me, the ones who blew the whistle. For offering to testify, we were dropped a pay grade, then secretly placed on a ‘permanent redeploy’ list. Eight months later, I was back in Iraq.”
“And the detainees?”
“That’s the worst part. Most of these people were innocent bystanders, picked up on sweeps by the private-army guys or turned in for cash rewards by locals. A lot of them weren’t even being tracked or registered, just held indefinitely.”
“And you did nothing to stop it?”
“I told you, I reported it. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Hey, you two! You’re late.”
They turned, confronted by a man dressed head to toe in camouflage black fatigues, his face concealed behind a rebreather. He motioned down the concrete stairwell with his assault rifle. “Better move it, assholes. The barge’ll be here any minute.”
Grabbing the dogs’ leashes, he pulled the animals aside, allowing Patrick and Virgil to make their way down the concrete stairwell into the dark recesses below.
Pier A
Battery Park City
10:11 P.M.
Built in 1875, Pier A was a 285-foot-long, forty-five-foot-wide solid masonry dock that jutted into the Hudson River at the southwest end of the Financial District at Battery Park Place. The pier supported an aging three-story structure, highlighted b
y green-and-white-painted arched windows and a Victorian clock tower located at its seaward end.
Hours earlier, the ferry docks adjacent to Pier A had been a beehive of activity. Tens of thousands had converged upon the waterfront park, mostly visitors, desperate to secure passage off the island. Kayaks were sold for $5,000 in cash, paddleboats exchanged for the keys to Jaguars and Mercedes Benzes. By sundown, any vessel that could float had been purchased, overloaded with civilians, and launched into the Hudson—
— each one intercepted within minutes and sunk by the Coast Guard, the surviving passengers forced to swim back to shore in frigid, limb-paralyzing water.
Few survived. The lucky ones had drowned.
* * *
The gate to Pier A’s chain-link fence swung open and closed with each gust of wind, the Arctic blasts coming off the harbor rattling the scaffolding. There were lights on in the structure — a half dozen bare bulbs connected to a portable generator.
Beneath the lights, resting on its trailer, sat the 1982 Bayliner 285 °Contessa Sedan Bridge Cuddy Cruiser. The boat was ten feet long, its fiberglass hull trimmed in blue and cream. Large enough to hold eight passengers comfortably, the cruiser featured a galley equipped with an alcohol-and-electric stove and a head that housed a sink, shower, and Porta Potti. The aft berth slept three.
The cruiser was hooked up to a winch, perched over a retractable section of deck that allowed access to the water beneath the northwest section of the pier.
Heath Shelby had purchased the boat for $6,000 from one of the pier’s managing partners. The engine seemed sound, but the hull was leaking from a collision that had occurred years earlier. The repairs had been improperly completed, making the vessel less than seaworthy. As part of the deal, the owner agreed to keep the vessel inside Pier A while its new owner completed the necessary repairs.
Heath Shelby lay on the dust-covered wood floor, his Santa Claus outfit serving as a blanket. He was burning with fever. Every few minutes, he coughed up a quarter-sized glob of bloodstained bile. A kiwi-sized tumor grew ripe beneath his left armpit.
