by Eddie Patin
Other than the sounds of the people around them, who they mostly avoided, and the constant roar of the strange orb of water next to the Chrysler Building, the city ... was very quiet. It felt very wrong, the vision of such a bustling city as still as a tomb.
Chad heard occasional squeaks and scurrying noises as they passed manholes and sewer covers. The water on 39th was over an inch deep! The cameraman figured that the rats must have been trying to get out of the sewers. Whatever underground drainage New York had—it was probably totally full. The animals down there were likely drowning...
The air here was also colder.
Even though it was April and very nice in California, and today might have otherwise been a nice day in New York City, the ever-present massive waterfall dumping into the street a few blocks over was spraying a thick mist into the air, and Chad didn’t have his jacket.
Back at the underground lab in Geneva, the cameraman had been wearing nothing more than slacks and a t-shirt with a news ID tag around his neck when the scientists opened Portal Zero and everything went to Hell...
He looked over at Santos.
The Hispanic-looking soldier walked calmly and smoothly, his boots parting the water apparently without discomfort. Santos wore a dark green camouflage uniform, with his black vest, pistol and all of his other soldier gear—stuff Chad wasn’t familiar with—layered on top of that.
The trooper still had the baby-blue UEA helmet strapped to his head, and the strong-jawed young man scanned the streets with hard and squinty eyes as he moved quietly beside Chad, holding his rifle casually down low by his waist.
He’s probably not cold, Chad thought.
Santos looked at him.
“What?” the soldier asked.
“Uh ... nothing,” Chad responded, looking forward to the street again.
The closer they came to passing the Chrysler Building, as they skirted a few blocks to the south around the phenomenon, the more people they saw gravitating to the water orb’s location.
Everyone was curious.
And wet.
“Where do you think that water comes from?” Santos asked.
Chad pursed his lips and shrugged. He felt the puppy’s weight move in the crate held by his right hand.
“No idea...”
“Maybe it’s another portal or something,” Santos said.
Now that was a good idea! This soldier was smart—nothing like how Chad thought he would be. Chad detested the military and anything having to do with guns and war. Anyone who willingly joined any sort of army, even if it was for the good cause of the United Earth Alliance like Santos here, had to be some sort of dumb grunt; some Neanderthal gun-nut bully...
Santos surprised him.
Chad swallowed, and realized how dry his throat was.
How long had it been since he ate or drank anything? He could remember breakfast that morning with Melinda and the makeup crew. Was that just this morning? Was it still morning? How long had they been running away from the monsters that came out of the portal? How long were they in the portal itself??
Chad looked up. Even through the thick, humid mist thrown up by the nearby waterfall, he could barely see that the sun still hadn’t reached its zenith. Was it before lunchtime still?
“Jesus, I’m thirsty,” he said.
“I’ve got nothing,” Santos replied, keeping his eyes forward as they moved on.
“There’s gotta be a store up here somewhere...”
“We should just book it until we reach the west side of the island,” Santos replied. “You know—to get away from the water thing? Maybe get away from downtown and the monsters that followed us out here?”
As if to punctuate his point, Chad heard a sudden shriek from several blocks away. Not a woman—more like a huge bird of prey, or a dinosaur. At least, it was how Chad figured a dinosaur would sound. It was just a quick sound, like a curious calling out, but definitely not human...
And it probably wasn’t any sort of animal indigenous to downtown New York...
“Shit,” Chad muttered to himself, and quickened his pace.
The young cameraman looked out over the constant flowing, rippling surface of the water pushing across the streets toward them from the Chrysler Building. His shoes were already soaked through and through, and the water was cold.
“I wonder if this is safe to drink...?”
Santos looked back at him with a smirk. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” Chad responded. “I’m thirsty as hell!”
“You have no idea where that water is from—if it’s even water! It could be totally poisonous!”
Chad swallowed.
Another good point.
As the two of them continued past the constant swell of water from the corner of what Chad figured was Lexington and 42nd Street, eventually the level of otherworldly fluid started to subside, and they found themselves on solid ground again.
“What is that?” a random guy in the street asked them as they passed. “What’s all that water?”
Chad hurried to keep up with Santos, who stayed focused and kept moving at a solid pace, and turned back briefly to the man. The guy’s face was dark and chubby.
“It’s a big, crazy water thing! You won’t believe it!” he said, then kept walking.
As Chad and Santos continued west on 39th Street, passing some metal pipe scaffolding and an office supply store, they made their way onto a sidewalk that was crowded between some bright orange construction barriers and the side of a building.
Finding themselves in the sudden construction zone, the cars were too tight together to continue between in the bottlenecked street. Chad wasn’t too sure about the safety of Santos leading them onto the sidewalk full of people, but the cameraman was relieved when most of the New Yorkers in their way caught sight of the UEA soldier and his gun and gear, and simply moved to the sides...
When he and Santos passed a couple of abandoned food carts, both clearly ransacked and empty of edibles, Chad gasped looking forward when a group of men ahead of them callously stepped into their path...
Santos stopped, rolled his shoulders once, and looked at the men.
Chad stood behind him.
“Excuse us,” Santos said.
Chad watched the young men’s responses. They were dressed in a variety of tattered jackets and hoodies, some in dull, dark colors, others decorated in bright reds. The dark-skinned man who stepped up in front flashed a grill of golden teeth, and held his hand in one pocket, imitating that he was holding a gun.
Either that, or he actually was holding a gun...
“Give us what you got!” the man said. “It’s time to pay a toll. What you got in that crate, cracka?”
He looked straight at Chad with a sneer, head cocked to the side.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Santos replied, raising his rifle. “Fuck off!”
The young cameraman caught his breath, suddenly remembering Max’s crate in his hand, then crouched in surprise when Santos aimed his gun at the men.
“Fuck this, yo!” one of them muttered, and vaulted over the orange plastic barrier on the side of the sidewalk, darting away into the tight maze of dead cars, holding up his pants. The other hoodlums broke and scattered, and the man with the golden teeth quickly followed suit with no one to back him up anymore.
“Come on,” Santos said once the way was clear, and Chad hustled after the soldier. They moved quickly down the choked sidewalk until the street opened up at the next block.
When the two of them finally slowed down, Chad rushed ahead to walk next to the UEA soldier.
“How did you know he didn’t have a gun?” Chad asked.
“I didn’t. What else were we supposed to do?”
“It sure looked like he had a gun.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Santos replied. “Whatever Saturday Night Special that thug had was nothing up against a modern 5.56mm rifle.”
They kept walking.
After several m
ore blocks, the sun was high in the sky, and Chad was finally starting to warm up from their time passing through the mist near the strange water orb. His shoes were still soaked and squishy, but he felt like they might eventually dry out on their own as the day went on.
Once, they passed an area flanked by tall apartment buildings with two tall and blue glass skyscrapers on their right side, and Chad paused to examine a long row of odd bicycle docks. It seemed to be some sort of city bike rental contraption, and over a dozen bright blue bicycles still stood waiting for riders with their front wheels held by the locking mechanisms.
“Hang on,” Chad said, approaching the nearest bicycle.
If they could take bikes, they’d be able to get out of the city much more quickly!
However, as he tugged on the nearest blue bicycle seat with his free hand, Chad was disappointed to see that they were still held fast by whatever electronic locks kept the front wheels in place. There was a kind of touch-screen interface on the docks, but, of course, they were all dead now. And when the power went out, the machines must have died in a way that still held the wheels secure.
Of course, he thought. If they weren’t locked anymore, everyone else would have stolen them all by now...
Chad heard a scrape of gravel, and looked up to see several people sitting on a stoop watching him. He studied their blank and directionless faces, and then turned to move on.
The two continued their urban journey, and Santos looked up at a hanging green sign that read “Lincoln Tunnel”.
“This way?” Chad asked.
“No—mustn’t be,” the soldier replied. “That goes to the south, I think. Hard to tell...”
“If it’s a tunnel, it must go under the water to the mainland, right?”
“Maybe,” Santos said. “Or it might just be another tunnel going some other way on the island here. We’ve already passed a few. Like that one in front of the UEA. We’d better just head to the western shore. I’m sure we’ll see a bridge at some point.”
“Okay,” Chad replied.
“It can’t be far now.”
A few more blocks down, they started to pass in between what looked like a huge bus station—or its parking lot at least—and what appeared to be a massive, covered paid parking garage with raised, curving concrete roads that elevated over the block and twisted off into every which way, like a very tight labyrinth of interstate onramps.
As they continued west, suddenly surrounded by parked city busses, Chad veered over to the chain link fence on his left, and saw that 39th—the street they were on—was elevated on that side. Or maybe it was more like that city block to the south was sunken below the level of everything else, and a convoluted maze of street lanes separated by concrete barriers and white plastic poles led to two very dark tunnels in the western corners of the block...
Yes, that was it. They weren’t higher. The whole block was below them.
The two tunnel entrances under the main street on the west corners had ‘guard posts’ with barrier poles that lowered and raised, along with several electric signals, but everything was dark and dead.
Many vehicles choked up the entire complex, going opposite directions.
“What the hell is that?!” Chad asked.
Santos walked up to the fence behind him and paused to look.
“That must be Lincoln tunnel. Wanna try it?”
“I dunno...” Chad replied.
It sure was dark down there...
And if the tunnel did indeed lead under the ocean—or whatever the water was called that ran in between Manhattan and the mainland—it must be darker than he could imagine down there...
Chad suddenly remembered how dark it was down in the lab under Geneva when the EMP hit. That was the deepest black he’d ever seen! The lab was many stories underground—there wasn’t even a hint of light from the surface down there—not like in the UEA lab they ended up in here in New York City!
Up ahead, back up on the street spanning over the tunnel entrances, was a bright yellow building full of mirror-like windows.
“I’d wager it’ll be really dark and dangerous in there,” Santos said.
“I’m sure you’re right!” Chad replied. “Let’s stick to the bridge idea.”
“Roger that.”
As it turned out, Santos was right about them being close to the edge of the island...
Chad noticed at one point that he couldn’t hear the dull roar of the floating orb of water behind them anymore. Instead, from up ahead, he could hear the lapping of ocean water and the constant drone of the sea that reminded him of being home in California.
Seagulls cawed randomly in the air around them, and Chad realized that they must be close to the docks!
After another block littered with broken down vehicles, trash, and broken glass, they hit a dead end at 11th Avenue at what looked like a massive convention center of some kind, then went a block north, and finally continued west until emerging at a large double-building of brown brick surrounded by yellow taxis and a handful of colorful city busses.
Once they crossed the big street full of dead cars and its median full of planters, they approached a chain link fence that was covered in cut-up green plastic. Through the cracks in between, Chad could finally get a good look at the water!
He was relieved to see that there weren’t many people around here—folks were mostly hanging back in the apartment complexes and other buildings back behind the convention center. Out here by the docks, there were only small clusters of people here and there; sometimes only single figures visible, watching the water off by themselves.
“North or south?” Chad asked.
“Let’s get a better look,” Santos replied, and they deviated from their path toward what ended up being a ‘water taxi’ ferry company. Passing by another battery of locked-up blue bicycles (Chad checked—they were all locked), the two walked out to the edge of the concrete pad to where they could look out over the expanse of water in between Manhattan and ... whatever part of New York was on the other side.
Chad found out later that it wasn’t the ocean they saw there. He was looking out over the Hudson River.
Several docks extended out into the water from the water taxi complex, leading to several ferries, no doubt disabled with fried electronics. Chad could also see, in the distance to the north, cruise liners and even some sort of big Navy boat!
“That’s an aircraft carrier,” Santos said when he saw Chad staring at it.
“Oh,” he replied. Max the puppy shifted in the crate in his hand. “Where’s the nearest bridge?”
“Hard to tell,” Santos said, looking up and down the great, slow-moving river. “I don’t see anything to the south. There’s a bridge to the north though, I think. See it?”
Chad squinted against the afternoon light glittering on the water, and saw a bright, suspended bridge up to the north.
He sighed.
It looked like they’d be heading that way.
And they’d be heading north for quite a while...
The bridge up there was very far away.
4 - Arthur Kline
Colorado Springs, CO
The sound of casual footsteps in the rocks outside pulled Arthur out of dark dreams full of dread.
He opened his eyes, and found himself curled up for warmth huddled against the wall of his front room, the chair he used for a gun brace sitting between him and the large, broken window. His Mossberg shotgun had fallen to the carpet and lay there, forgotten...
As Arthur stirred, he realized that his hands were numb from cold and his entire body was stiff and sore.
He opened his mouth to curse quietly, but his face was frozen up.
Damn it, he thought. Forgot about the lack of heat again. He fell asleep with zombies just outside the window last night. Even though the windows were all boarded up and barricaded with interior doors and 2x4’s, the glass was still broken, and the temperature inside the house was the same as it was outside!
<
br /> “Fuck,” he muttered.
Samson the cat chirped next to him.
Arthur looked down and saw the family cat curled up next to his legs, the only spot of warmth in the chilly morning. Samson looked up at him with his eyes closed with a yawning grin, then stretched out on the carpet.
The cat didn’t care. He had fur.
Just outside, Arthur could still hear the dim sounds nearby of groans and idle, gurgling growls.
The monsters were still here—just outside...
Arthur himself groaned as he tried to move, his joints locked up and his extremities numb with cold. And he had several blankets just in the next room!
“Stupid,” he said to himself.
The footsteps outside continued, crunching through the rocks just outside.
He heard something else, too—not random, shambling steps of idle zombies. There were deliberate steps as well! Someone walking with purpose!
One of the creatures let out a louder moan, then snarled.
A sudden, sharp sound that reminded him of a car door slamming made Arthur jump in surprise. The snarling zombie let out a wet gasp after a thwack, and hissed in retaliation. The strange, muffled crack sounded again, and Arthur heard a body fall!
The steps continued. Paused.
Two more car door slams. Ca-chunk, ca-chunk. There was the tinkle of something small and metallic landing in the rocks.
Then, after a few more steps, Arthur heard boots scratching at the pavement outside on his front walkway.
And then there was a knock at the door!
Arthur gasped, stared at the door for a moment, then he shook his head to clear the grogginess and struggled to his feet.
There were three more confident raps on the door.
“Hello?” a man’s voice said from outside. “Arthur?”
“Ugh ... hang on!” Arthur called back, slipping, and using the chair to help him stand. He crouched down to pick up the shotgun, and his knees popped loudly. “Fuck...” His fingers refused to work properly, but he clumsily forced them to open the chamber to make sure the gun was still loaded. It was.
