The girl’s chin puckered and her face tightened, “It’s beyond that wall isn’t it? They’re processing us like cattle aren’t they?” She let out a gasping sob.
Noticing her sob, the nearby Sthenos guard turned to her.
“I’m sorry—”
“Shhh” Stacy cut her off and fell silent as the guard walked up to the girl. In that lowered, centaur-like position it still towered over the girl. Lifting the rod, which crackled with blue arcs, the guard let out a deep thrumming mixed with the skin-chilling, variant clicking.
The girl stared hatred at it as she plucked a dandelion and tossed it at the guard’s feet.
The thrumming tones increased, vibrating Stacy’s chest and legs, and the clicking grew sharper. The Sthenos stood on its hind legs, its middle appendages folding around its waist. She caught the scent of ozone most likely coming off of the cooling unit on the back of the suit.
“They won’t do anything to me,” she said with an angry growl at the guard, “because they don’t want to damage—” she ripped up a handful of dandelions and tossed them at the guard, “the meat.”
As the dandelions fluttered to the Sthenos’ broad, multi-clawed feet, Stacy found herself amazed at the girl’s boldness. This girl was much stronger than she’d been at that age. Stacy had been a coward, nervous on the stage of the world. This one however, captured and sentenced to die, still had a great deal of fire in her heart. Stacy wanted to put a hole in the Sthenos’ smoked face shield with the pistol on her hip, use the small length of det-cord she carried to blow down the fence, and take the girl with her.
The rod in the Sthenos’ hand crackled. Whipping its arm, it sent a blue bolt crackling into the girl. Back arching, she fell, her hands locked into claws. The Sthenos settled down on all fours and walked away. The girl lay on her back, her arms relaxed, one in the grass and one across her belly. Her empty eyes reflected the pale-blue sky.
As she regained consciousness, she blinked and whispered, “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
The girl kept her eyes on the sky as she said, “They had me shackled when they ate them. They skinned my mother like a deer.”
The girl patted her hands on her belly casually, as if she were discussing her weekend with a friend. “They want the good meat. They killed the older ones, burned the bodies. I’ve thought about it a lot. I think they ate my parents because they’re only allowed to eat the older ones… maybe the ones that fight back. I think they’re exporters. They’re butchering us and,” she pointed to the sky, “they’re going to sell the meat to whoever is out there.” Stacy’s eyes followed the girl’s finger up to the cirrus-streaked sky.
The girl sat up and held her head as her face winced with pain.
“Please don’t leave me here.”
Stacy looked to her HUD. She should have left two minutes ago. She could make up the time, but it put her at risk.
“I can’t stay now, but keep your head down. I’ll be back.” The lie burned.
The girl looked over her shoulder at the Sthenos walking among the people, their rear legs bending unnaturally backwards. As she looked back, the fear in her eyes broke Stacy’s heart.
“I can’t help unless I leave. If they try to take you through those doors…” She took her K-bar from its sheath and shoved it tip-first through the fence. As the knife left her hand, it materialized and fell to the dirt. The handle smoked where it had brushed the fencing. “…do as much damage as you can.”
The girl covered the blade with her hands and slid it under her thigh.
“I have to go,” Stacy said.
The girl nodded, eyes down. “You’ll be back right?”
“This will be over soon enough.”
As Stacy stood, she felt something more needed to be said, but couldn’t find the will to lie further. Instead, she walked away, haunted. She made her way with quick gliding steps to where her line hung down the building, draped over the rubble pile. She had yet to strategize how to get back up the rubble pile. Without the weight of the pack, and already having a line set, it would be easier.
The rubble at the front of the building consisted of everything from roofing tiles to concrete slabs to pieces of sinks and toilets. Large slabs of concrete made up this side of the rubble. Her eyes tracked up the slabs, as she visualized herself jumping from one to the next, but each path she picked ended in wide swaths of tile, bricks, loose stone, insulation, and glass. Far too noisy to disturb. Her eyes scanned up the line to where it disappeared over the cornice. If she made a noise and attracted the Sthenos now, they would see the line. They would know someone had infiltrated. They might launch the destroyer. Scanning the rubble all around, she found no place that would allow her a quiet escape and nowhere she could hide which was outside the singularity’s range.
She was effectively trapped. She thought of going to sit with the girl until the warhead triggered, or she could hunker down in the hole where she had set the… the hole. In the corner of her memory she recalled that there had been a half buried door in the low tunnel. She ran back to the hole and dropped down. There she found a metal door half covered with a slab of concrete. Pulling on the steel handle, she found the slab too heavy to move on her own. Taking out a new length of line from a second spool, she wrapped it around the slab. She tied a trucker’s hitch in the rope and ran it up to a half exposed pipe on the far side of the hole. Wrapping the rope around the grating and then back to the hitch knot, and again, and again, she created a series of pulleys. She pulled on the rope slow and steady, and the slab shifted out of the way, dragging a path in the accumulated dirt with a ceramic sound. She sat listening to the street above and watching the clock on her HUD count how many minutes she’d overridden her departure time.
The street above remained quiet.
A few more minutes.
Still nothing.
Okay, time to fly.
She stuck her head into the doorway to find total blackness.
“Suit-Con,” she whispered, “infrared.” Infrared lamps mounted to her helmet lit the area. In her HUD, a narrow shaft, running down to a landing some thirty feet below, glowed in a ghostly green. A steel ladder had been bolted to the far side of the shaft. Stepping out onto it, she lowered herself down the rebar rungs to the platform.
A short passage opened into a subway tunnel. The end of a subway car sat somewhat tilted in the quiet tunnel. She looked over the side of the train, into the windows, and along the narrow concrete walkway. Finding nothing of interest, she began moving west along the foot-wide walkway. Counting her steps, she maintained an estimate of how far she’d come. She’d need a subway station or access shaft beyond the fenced area.
The tunnel turned northward. She walked on until she felt she’d moved well-away from the rubble perimeter, but found no access shafts nor stations. With each step north, she added to her distance to the rendezvous point. She began a low, quiet jog, again grateful to no longer have the weight of the pack.
Her HUD began pulsing red. She was now forty-one minutes past her departure time. She should be swimming the river now.
A loud clank of metal on metal sounded out ahead of her. She stopped and scanned the tunnel. The tracks lay to her right. Out ahead, perhaps 100 yards, a small frame of brilliant-green glowed around a doorway.
Chapter Sixty-Two
“Suit-Con,” Stacy whispered, “infrared off.”
The tunnel fell into darkness. A rectangle of electric light now illuminated the doorframe.
Moving in the darkness with quiet steps, she slid her hand along the tile wall. Nearing the door, she listened. Voices murmured. No deep resonation or clicks. One was high pitched, nasal. The other deep, but not alien. They might be able to lead her out of the tunnel. It was a risk, but her gut told her to take it, so she turned the door knob and shoved the door open.
The light extinguished. She heard shuffling followed by the slip-clack of a gun-slide.
“I’m Commander Stacy Zack wit
h U.S. Navy Special Warfare. I’m here to help.”
“Show yourself.”
With a loaded weapon trained on me? Good luck.
“Suit-Con,” she whispered to her suit, “Infrared on.” The world came back to her glowing green. She leaned around the door frame. The room was a storage area of some kind with shelving units along the walls. Two men in jumpsuits hunkered at the back beside a cluttered desk. The larger aimed a shotgun on the doorway. Moving quietly on the balls of her feet, Stacy stepped through the doorway and to the right, out of the line of fire.
“Gentlemen, I need you to remain calm.”
As she spoke, the larger man’s eyes went wider, searching the darkness.
She moved further right, now up against the shelving.
The smaller man flicked on the light at the same time the larger man fired the shotgun blindly right where Stacy had been standing. While her suit had muffled the blast, she knew their ears would be ringing.
This is not how I’d hoped this would go down.
The electric light overwhelmed the infrared and her suit automatically cut out the display. She stood seven feet or so from the men, both unwashed and unshaven with eyes narrowing against the bright light. They wore stained, orange jumpsuits with black letters stencil-sprayed across the chest, “Property of Allegany Co.”
Prisoners.
Stacy wanted to leave, but before she could, she had to deal with the shotgun. Even an errant shot in the right direction of a sound could severely injure her if not cut her in half. She cursed herself silently for having come in the room.
The man lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, finger on the trigger. He tracked the barrel left and right, sweeping it momentarily across Stacy’s chest.
When the barrel tracked away from her, she leapt forward, slapping the gun to the side. It went off with a concussion that left even her ears ringing. She whipped her elbow over his shoulder and caught the side of his neck with a heavy thump. His eyes went vague as he dropped. She snatched the gun’s receiver and pulled it from his hands as he fell. Foot-long sections of the gun vanished as the suit attempted to cloak it, but it was too long to fully vanish.
The man had fallen to his knees, and to assure he wouldn’t lunge for her, she kicked him in the chest, knocking him backward. She threw the half visible shotgun out the door. It clattered to the tracks in the darkness.
The smaller man was staring directly at her so she moved sideways with cautious steps out of his sightline. The larger man groaned and rolled over, holding his neck.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice sounding vague after being nearly knocked unconscious.
“I don’t want trouble,” Stacy said. “I need to know how to get out of here, fast.”
“Uncloak yourself and I’ll tell you.”
Stacey laughed. “Tell me, or I’ll kill you and have your friend tell me.”
“Then get the hell out of here. This is the Broadway tunnel. You got stations in ten blocks either way.”
“Which is closer?” But in that moment Stacy had underestimated the big man. He lunged forward, not at her, but for the doorway. He slammed the door shut with an echoing bang of metal and turned to generally where she stood. At his full height he was over six feet tall and well over two-hundred pounds.
“I know you’re still in here, and I can tell by your voice you’re a sweet little girl.” A wicked smile drew across his face. “We’re gonna have ourselves a little talk.”
Stacy said, “So that’s what it comes to. We make all this progress for thousands of years and in a few days and a few missed meals this is what we fall to?”
“Oh not we, honey,” the big man said, rubbing his hands together, “I never been any good. We ain’t all raised with silver spoons in our mouths.”
Stacy was about to make her move on the man, when something in the back of her mind came forward. “Where did you come from?”
“Allegany County Pri—”
“I can see that. How did you get here?”
“The eaters brought us.”
“Eaters.”
“Well, that’s what they doin’ ain’t they?”
“I suppose.”
“It’s true. So when they got us out of the prison and moved us all around, they cut up the old ones and burned ‘em. Meat must be no good. No matter, those old guys have nothin’ but bullshit stories anyway. They spent their whole lives behind bars and then think they have somethin’ to tell me.” The man laughed, “Those spider things can’t have me though, and not Shay here neither.”
Stacy looked to the smaller man Shay, who touched his forehead in a flippant salute. He smiled showing darkly yellowed teeth.
The larger man continued, “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be some freak’s meal. At night Shay and me dug under the fence. We know what to do. Spread the dirt out across the yard, so there’s no evidence, dig it in between bushes and fill it with branches. We worked slow and took turns. If the guards looked too close, one of us would cause a distraction, pick a fight or somethin’. You know. It only took us a week. Stupid fuckers are useless guards.”
“Is the hole still there?”
“Yeah… why?”
Stacy looked at her HUD. She had thirty minutes before the singularity went off.
I only want to get one out.
“No matter though,” Shay said behind her. He smiled. “It’s the end of the world, and you sound pretty.”
“Are you sure?” Stacy asked.
Shay hesitated at the question.
“Oh we’re sure,” came the larger one’s response. “We’re absolutely sure. Now I’m gonna go ahead and cover the exit while Shay here swings a metal pipe around. IF he hits you and we get our hands on you, then you gonna regret it. Why not just shut that fancy cloaking device off and let us have a look at you?”
Stacy said, “I don’t have time for this.”
Shay took a three-foot pipe from the desk and swung it like a baseball bat. When he stepped forward, Stacy stood right in the strike zone. As he swung it again, Stacy dropped into a pushup position. The pipe whipped over her head.
The big man said, “Looks like you gonna have to make time.”
Stacy pulled her pistol and trained it between the big man’s eyes. “Last chance to step out of the doorway.”
The pipe whipped the air again.
“Sorry boys,” she said and pulled the trigger. The gun’s grip bucked into her palm as the small silencer reduced the report to a crack, still pronounced in the confined room. A hole appeared between the big man’s eyes as dark material splattered against the door. He tilted forward and slammed face first to the ground, dead.
She asked Shay, “Where’s the tunnel you dug?”
Shay dropped the pipe mid swing. As it clanked to the floor, he said, “I…”
“The tunnel. Save your life Shay, talk quickly. If you lie, I come back and hunt you down. How did you get out of the fence?”
Shay did speak quickly, almost too quickly for Stacy to understand. “There’s a transformer with three bushes around it near the latrine. It’s between the bushes.”
“Where does it come out?”
Shay looked to the door as if he might make a run for it.
Stacy shot the light switch behind him and all fell into darkness.
“Suit-Con,” she said, “infrared.”
“Now Shay, you’re standing in complete darkness and I can see you as clear as day. If you want to live, tell me where it comes out.”
“I don’t know… about ten feet away from the fence there’s a big hole in the street, a big crack where a foundation was. We dug out there. There’s a cab next to it, smashed flat by a street light.”
“North or south of the fence?”
“North… ten feet north.”
Stacy watched Shay’s frightened eyes. Here she had a man compliant in fear, but a few moments ago, he’d been ready to hit her with a pipe and do what he liked. He was a killer and a user. If th
ey succeeded in stopping the Sthenos, the next step would be to save the human race from those like him. If she let him live, if he found someone defenseless, he’d use them just like he’d said he wanted to use her.
“I’m sorry Shay.”
“No, no, please,” he said as if reading her mind. “You need to know how to get out of here, and I can help you do that. The next station is ten blocks away. It’ll take a long time. I can have you on the surface in two minutes.”
“How?”
“Give me your word you won’t kill me, and I’ll tell you.”
Stacy thought for a moment before saying, “Okay. Tell me.”
A look of relief washed over Shay’s face, and he side stepped. Stacy kept her pistol trained on his skull as he moved. He pointed behind him to a metal door that Stacy had taken for a closet. “That’s the exit right there. There’s a ladder up to a manhole cover.”
“Open the door.”
Shay walked over and pulled the door open. It moved readily on oiled hinges and clanked to a stop on the wall. Stacy could see the rungs of a ladder on the far wall.
“That won’t do me any good Shay.”
“Why not?”
“There’s a pile of rubble where I need to go I can’t climb. I have to go back the way I came.”
“The pile they made? No, on the north side, there’s a pathway over it that’s just concrete blocks, you can climb it without making noise. It’s right on 6th Avenue. That’s how we got out. It’ll bring you right over to the tunnel we dug.”
Stacy considered her options, go back and have to arc around to the south side of Bryant Park because the subway tracks didn’t go straight to the park. She didn’t have time for that. She’d have to trust a convict’s word.
“Okay Shay, get out of here.”
Shay began to step through the door.
“Not that way. Go into the subway tunnel and walk down the walkway. I’m going to watch you. If you stop, I kill you.”
“H-How far do I have to go?”
“I’d suggest not stopping.”
Shay stepped forward, but crashed into a metal shelf. “I can’t see nothin’.”
“What would you prefer, walking in pitch dark and turning an ankle or having your skull sprayed all over the subway tracks like your friend?”
Hammerhead Resurrection Page 35
