Web of Extinction (Zone War Book 3)

by John Conroe

  I held tight to his wings but he kept his flight stable and there was no air movement in the tunnel to rock his airframe. I closed my eyes and counted seconds in my head. Rikki had estimated about ten kilometers per hour carrying my lanky ass as the best (and by that I mean the most energy-efficient) speed he could make. I kept myself busy doing the math in my head while still trying to count the time. Over five minutes to clear the water, that’s what I came up with. At a mental count of five minutes and forty-six seconds, he came to a stop and I opened my eyes. We were now over wet concrete and steel rails, but none of it was submerged. The edge of the underground lake was just behind us.

  I slid off his airframe, noticing he was now wobbly when before he was rock solid.

  The rifle came off my back, weapon light on, and I did a quick sweep of the area. A few sets of beady red eyes met my lights but otherwise the bulk of the rats seemed to be still on the water. Still, our time was short. We had to get a move on, as they would catch up eventually.

  “Status?”

  “Power reserves at eleven percent.”

  I pulled the first power pack from a pocket and plugged it into his recharge port. Then, while he was still hovering, I pulled a pair of nylon straps from yet another pocket and attached these to four tie-down points on his airframe. My own small pack I slipped on backwards so that it was on my chest.

  “Change to vertical.”

  He obliged, lifting his nose to the ceiling so I could slip an arm through each of the straps.

  “Power off all fans and non-essential systems.”

  “Affirmative,” he said just as his full dead weight hit my shoulders.

  Rikki is made of ultra-light components, mostly titanium and carbon fiber, but between his missile loadout and his batteries, he still tips the scales at just over thirty-five kilos. That makes him a pretty heavy backpack, but the tunnel was straight and smooth and most of the rats were behind us. He had carried me; now it was my turn to carry him.

  It was easier to say than do. I’ve carried packs with more weight, but they were all ergonomically fitted to balance on my body in the most efficient way. Rikki was a big slab of triangular composite material whose rear thrusters banged on the back of my legs while the barrel of his e-mag gun occasionally banged into the back of my head.

  I tried to remember that I had ancestors, hell, probably living relations, who had hauled stranger and more awkward items high into the Himalayas without complaint. Aama had told me many stories of almost superhuman feats of strength and endurance in air so thin that outsiders could barely walk in it unburdened.

  So it was head down and one foot in front of the other. Just a kilometer. The slope upward was very moderate and the footing was pretty good. I saw other rats but only had to shoot twice. Both times, the noise and muzzle flash drove them away. I had figured it would take about fifteen minutes of slogging to get to the East Broadway station. Turned out it only took thirteen. It’s entirely possible that Rikki announcing the arrival of the rat pack at the edge of the water behind us motivated me to pick up speed near the end of my trek.

  Regardless, the seven-meter-wide tunnel suddenly opened up to a much wider space with raised platforms on either side of us and the back end of an abandoned subway car blocking the last part of the station.

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that a subway car might be left in the tunnel. Had we run into that in the flooded section, it would have been a major issue. I thanked my ancestors as I unstrapped Rikki and put his second charger in place. I tossed the dead battery pack to the floor of the tunnel.

  “Status?”

  “Twenty-three percent power and charging. Sensor sweep indicates no presence of rats or other mammals in this area. Electromagnetic detection indicates no drones in immediate area; however, caution is warranted as we exit the station. Stairwells block signals.”

  Yeah, caution… no shit. But I couldn’t wait to get topside and away from the dank tunnels and their ratty inhabitants.

  Chapter 10

  It was, of course, still night when we came up out of the station. The stars were out, in fact.

  From here, we had a pretty straight two-and-a-quarter kilometer march to get to 55 Broadway. And the first half of that trek was on Madison Street and would take us right past my best weapons cache in the entire Zone—NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza.

  Emergency Services Units had responded brilliantly to Drone Night, saving thousands of lives, but paying a heavy price to do so. The ESU heavy trucks and Lenco armored vehicles had fought through the night and into the following day to hold attacking drones at bay long enough for Manhattanites to evacuate the island. Trinity Flottercot had told me that video footage of those brave officers fighting from their vehicles had been the germ of the idea for Zone War.

  I’ve found a couple of the trucks where their operators fell, all shot up and, in two cases, burnt out. In those cases, the drones had salvaged most of the dropped weapons, leaving me with slim pickings.

  But deep in the massive NYPD headquarters, I had found untouched supplies of weapons and ammunition, allowing me to restock at least one armory with some of the best equipment I could hope for.

  There was one episode of Zone War where a team went to One Police Plaza but couldn’t get very far inside it before the drone response became too heavy to continue. The drones were programmed to scavenge ammo and weapons from likely locations such as police stations. So the biggest police station of them all had been a popular drone hangout over the years. That activity has dropped off in recent times, especially as all of the good resources had already been collected and hidden away—by me.

  “What do you think?”

  “Current energy levels now at twenty-eight percent. Remaining power in charging cell likely to convert to approximately thirty-one percent when complete. Weather forecast indicates strong sunshine today; however, charging will still require significant time to reach even fifty percent. Drone presence likely to be strong once this unit goes fully active.”

  “In other words, we should keep going while it’s dark and I should carry you to preserve power.”

  “Affirmative. Successfully reaching weapons cache on Madison during remaining hours of darkness will enhance probability of mission success.”

  “Yeah. We get to police headquarters, let you charge a bit as the sun comes up while I upgrade my weapons.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Pretty much my thoughts as well. A slow, careful walk for another kilometer or so, in the dark, rest till sunup, then work my way into the cache while Rikki stayed powered down and solar charging. After that, move to 55 Broadway and kill Plum Blossom. Oh, and then exfiltrate back out through the subway after escaping all the pissed-off drones. And rats.

  I paused long enough to eat some ration bars and rehydrate, then resettled the heavy Decimator on my back. Time to get slogging.

  Nighttime movement in the Zone is tricky. There are generally no active drones, but usually plenty of passively resting ones. Mostly that means that you can move carefully, out in the open, but God help you if you trip the sensors of a dormant killing machine. Powered-down Zone drones were also harder for Rikki to sense, just as he was harder to detect by them when he wasn’t operating at full power. Then there was the danger of dogs, rats, and, sometimes, a much larger predator.

  Many of the carnivores in the Central Park Zoo had been released after Drone Night—by the drones themselves. Another tactic: Send hungry mammalian predators out into the city. The zoo was small and the list of predators there was even smaller. But what a list. Grizzlies, snow leopards, and snow monkeys were all let out. They did surprisingly well, most of them hanging in and around Central Park. But over the last decade, the final grizzly had died, as had the original leopards and most of the original monkeys. However, those last two species had produced offspring, some of which were still around. I had seen big cat tracks in the dirt and dust of the city, and the snow monkeys were still hanging in there. And t
hen there was some other stuff.

  New Yorkers are a weird lot. The number of illegal exotic animals being kept in apartments at the time of the attack was kind of crazy. Most died, especially the reptiles, but some of the cat tracks I’d seen were too large for a leopard. Just saying.

  It was cool and very quiet, with a brisk breeze moving through the concrete canyon of Madison Street. I had left my head lamp back in the subway, reverting to normal Zone rules of survival. Shining a light around the empty streets was guaranteed to trip the passive sensors of something.

  Starlight was all I had, but the street was mostly clear of obstacles and if I took my time, I could move fairly quietly. Day or night, it’s all about moving slow. Know exactly where each foot is going to step before taking that step. Pause and listen, smell and feel. Look with the edges of your vision, the part of the eye where the light-sensitive rods are clustered.

  Dad had started me on movement, particularly night movement, when I first learned to walk, long before the attack. Back then, it was fun to learn to overcome my instinctive fear of the dark. Now days though, I cultivated a healthy paranoia. There really were monsters out there in the night.

  The feeling of something flying overhead caused me to freeze up at one point, but it was an owl, flying on silent wings in pursuit of a rat. Get ‘em, buddy. Eat every single one that you can.

  I heard dogs howling a few times, mostly north, up near the Park. And I almost stepped on a Russian Wolf bot.

  Damned thing was all folded down in a lump near the curb on the north side of the street, legs tucked underneath it. At first I mistook it for a fallen scooter. But when I was almost even with it, I realized it was missing wheels… and handlebars.

  I was three meters away when my brain signaled me that its previous identification had been a bit hasty. The default response is to freeze. I was ice.

  Normally, going motionless three meters or more from an old Wolf gives you a pretty good chance to survive the moment. But I was lugging an actively charging drone on my back. Granted, Rikki was mostly powered down, but I had no real idea of how much of an EM field the charger was generating or at what range it would trigger the Wolf.

  So I froze. Then, very carefully, I turned to face the bot. There were multiple good reasons for this. One, if it awoke, I would open up with the 5.56mm and hope that the light armor piercing rounds would deliver a kill. Two, and more importantly, twisting around put a big chunk of EM-blocking carbon fiber between the Wolf and the charger, which was duct taped to Rikki’s top surface. The Decimator itself could possibly block EM signals, or at least reduce the range of the charger’s output.

  Nothing happened for a full two minutes. So I checked the space to my left and then took a very careful side step. Wait. Watch. Nothing. Bring right foot over to left. Repeat waiting and watching. Check next space. Move left foot. Pause. Observe. Repeat.

  I think I used up twenty minutes moving another fifteen meters down the road and away from the bot. Twenty minutes of real time and like ten years of my life. I was sweating rivers even though the air was pretty cool. Finally, when I was another fifty meters farther along, I paused to sip some water and try to relax the tension in my body. Tired and sweaty, it was a major relief to begin normal movement again—till I looked ahead.

  On the right side of the street, aka the north side, I could just see the corner of the police building. But on the other side was an area of trees that began at least four blocks from my goal. It was originally, I think, green space for the buildings around it, almost a park, but now it was an overgrown forest jungle, representing unknown dangers. I have always approached this area in daylight. What lived or lurked in those trees that might use the night, I have no idea.

  Still a block from the edge of the wooded area, I stopped and carefully took Rikki off my back.

  “Status?” I whispered.

  The little green hologram lit up. 32%. Charging cell fully depleted.

  I unplugged the little power cell and left it wedged up in the wheel well of a defunct Mitsubishi Outlander. Just laying around on the ground, it would attract dangerous attention—leave a kind of back trail.

  “Scan heavy vegetation on south side of road ahead,” I said as quietly as I could while holding him level to the ground, nose gun (and sensors) pointed at the woods. Even with his rear wings propped against my thighs, my arms trembled as I tried to keep him steady.

  He clicked once to let me know his scan was complete. Trying not to drop him, I still hurried to get him down so I could look at his hologram display. When his weight was fully down on the ground, I breathed a little easier, stretching my tired limbs and muscles. The little green holo lit up.

  Thermal signatures indicate resting mammals and birds of various sizes.

  “Anything the size of a predator I need to worry about?” I whispered.

  Three possible hits. Unable to confirm.

  Great. There was nothing living in the Zone that met that size requirement that I was even slightly interested in tangling with. I sat back and thought about my options. Rikki’s screen lit up a second later with a new message.

  Lift fans at 30% power would allow you to push Unit 19 forward with little resistance and minimal expenditure of power.

  “How much power expenditure?”

  1 or 2%.

  This whole power thing with Rikki was important because we were definitely going to be fighting drones. Lots of drones, plus Plum Blossom itself. Rikki had large amounts of e-mag rounds, which were basically 10mm diameter hardened steel ball bearings. But he needed electricity to fire that gun, and to fly, evade, chase, sense, and launch micro-missiles. Our plan was to let him charge in the sun while I leveled up my own lethality. My NYPD cache held a game changer—at least, I thought it would be. Definitely something never fielded in the Zone before now, as far as I knew. Actually, maybe a couple of game changers.

  “Okay. Let’s do it. Power your lift fans to thirty percent and let’s get to that cache,” I whispered back.

  His answer was immediate, all four fans lifting his heavy frame a meter off the ground. I started pushing him along in front of me with my left hand while my right kept a tight hold on the pistol grip of my AR. Slow, steady movements, maybe just a bit faster than I had been moving before. My eyes were everywhere, my head moving like it was on a swivel, and every other sense was straining to its utmost.

  We came even with the woody area, staying closer to the north side of the street. But I couldn’t ignore the north either, because an attack could come from anywhere. Odds of a drone being active now were slim but not out of the question.

  We were halfway down the line of thick woods when Rikki suddenly swiveled under my hand, nose gun pointing at a spot in the woods. I froze, but he did nothing else. After a few seconds, I moved forward, again pushing on him as he continued to turn to stay on target as we passed the invisible spot he was aimed at.

  Nothing happened and after about eight or ten meters, Rikki turned back forward and we just kept on, closing the distance between us and our goal.

  We turned right onto Pearl Street and crept up on the back of the police building.

  In the last ten years, I’ve been all over that building, first with my dad, then without him. It’s a huge place, but I think I’ve discovered most of its secrets. Lots of locked doors in the biggest police station of the biggest police force in America. Lots of security. But without power to the alarms and electric locks, and given enough time, everything is vulnerable. I’ve crossed paths with all kinds of drones in and around the building. That’s why my personal collection of NYPD toys is accessed through the back of the building, where the maintenance and custodial staff who once ran the facilities kept the supplies they needed to keep the massive structure functioning. And the back door avoided the whole front of the building.

  In the depths of the building, there were all kinds of vaults and armories, as you might imagine. There were even a few surprises in the office of the police commissi
oner. But all the safes and vaults eventually fell to me and my tools. And I never forgot that if those security features could fall to me, they could fall to anything. So I had long ago moved my scavenged goodies to a much less obvious location… a secondary custodial storage room behind the main cleaning supply room. I had camouflaged the door to the second room with two big pallets of plastic-wrapped toilet paper, completely blocking that opening from view.

  The back door to the building that I use isn’t locked anymore, but the telltale marker that I left behind had been disrupted, so something or someone had come through here.

  “Full sensors,” I ordered as soon as I saw that the little strand of clear tape on the upper corner of the door was broken.

  “Sensors have been fully active since park. Unknown drone presence detected in park.”

  “Unknown, or not able to determine which type it was?” The fact that we had moved past a drone of some kind was worrisome. The fact that he couldn’t figure out what make it had been was worse.

  “EM signature did not match any known drone type anywhere. AJ, the space ahead is clear.”

  We entered the building.

  Chapter 11

  After closing the door behind us, I broke out a chem light and we moved from the hall into the big supply room. Rikki automatically settled on a pallet of paper towels that was out in the middle of the room. Past experience had shown that it was perfectly situated to gather the morning light that would soon come through the windows placed up high on the east wall. Dawn was approaching and he was all set for charging.