Terminus

by Adam Baker

  He forced himself to look.

  ‘Mother of God,’ he murmured.

  Something at the centre of the knotted mess. The radio operator. He sat on a swivel chair, slumped over the receiver, embedded like the radio was eating him head first. He had succumbed to infection. His upper body was a mass of rippled metal. He was fused with the transmitter, fused with the torrent of chrome spilling across the floor, melding with the fabric of the carriage.

  Cloke stepped between tendrils rooted in the splintered floorboards.

  The young man gripped the edge of the table. His hand seemed healthy, normal. Cloke pulled off a glove, intending to check for warmth, for life, but glanced at the metal-melded head and withdrew.

  He examined the radio. A green power light pulsed like a heartbeat. Frequency needles twitched in time to the strange, cardiovascular rhythm.

  He checked beneath the table. The power cable hung severed and frayed.

  It was as if the radio had become an extension of the kid’s nervous system. The chips and circuits were now incorporated into the neural architecture of his brain, responding to fleeting static-bursts of synaptic activity.

  Cloke unhooked the Motorola from his belt and retuned.

  ‘Rescue party calling Bellevue, can anyone hear me, over?’

  No response.

  ‘Ivanek. Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?’

  Transmission needles twitched and rose.

  The young man’s voice crackled through the speaker of Cloke’s radio. Distant, shouting to be heard over a storm-howl of interference.

  ‘Who is this? Who is talking?’

  ‘Cloke. Matthew Cloke. I’m here to help.’

  ‘Am I dreaming?’

  ‘No. You’re not dreaming.’

  ‘Am I alive?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You’re in Manhattan. You’re in a subway tunnel. There was a bomb.’

  ‘My memory. Things come and go.’

  ‘Just take it easy.’

  ‘Why can’t I see you?’

  ‘It’s dark.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘The Cav?’

  ‘We were waiting for the bomb, counting down the minutes.’

  ‘Don’t worry about them.’

  ‘Where’s the woman? I spoke to a woman.’

  ‘She can’t be with us. She had to stay behind.’

  ‘Please. Come quickly.’

  ‘What happened? Can you remember?’

  ‘I don’t know how I got here.’

  ‘Where are you? Can you describe it to me?’

  ‘I’m alone. It’s cold. It’s dark. There’s no one here but me.’

  ‘Don’t worry kid. We’ll be with you soon.’

  An ammo trunk stamped 5.56MM PYRO. Tombes lifted the lid. Bean tins.

  He sat on the trunk, surrounded by food boxes, bedding rolls and medical gear. Stuff hurled aboard the train in the panic of evacuation.

  A Nike holdall on the floor beside him. He lifted the flap. Civilian stuff. Photographs, jewellery, bank documents. Someone fled an apartment, swept their life into a bag as they headed for the door.

  He reached into the holdall. A bottle cap protruded from a couple of balled T-shirts. Wild Turkey, quarter full. He uncorked and sniffed. He took a long slug. And a second. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  He looked around. No guns. Each 101st Cav should have been carrying an assault rifle and side arm. Maybe they expended their ammunition during the short journey from the hospital to the 23rd Street Station. Must have been quite a battle. Troops working their way block by block in cover/fire formation. Tossing grenades. Shooting their mags dry, shooting until their weapons smoked hot and jammed, in a desperate race to get underground.

  Or maybe most of the soldiers refused to board the train for its final journey into the tunnel. No fight left in them. Perhaps they rode the freight elevator to the top of the Federal Building and waited for the bomb to drop. Injured, exhausted men electing to die on their own terms. Sat on the roof beside the water tower, sharing a cigarette. They shielded their eyes from the gamma flash, watched the unfurling mushroom cloud, yelled a defiant Fuck You at the oncoming firestorm.

  Tombes took another hit of Wild Turkey.

  ‘Rest easy, guys.’

  An improvised surgical theatre.

  Blacked out windows. Forceps, scalpels and bone saws scattered across the floor.

  Tombes inspected rough planks laid across saw-horse trestles. A crude operating table. Blood soaked into the grain, staining it black. Leather buckle straps for wrists and ankles.

  A butcher’s slab. Unsuitable for surgery, perfect for dividing a side of beef with crude blows of a cleaver.

  He took another sip of bourbon.

  If Cloke were there he would say:

  ‘Cool it with the booze, all right? Keep a clear head.’

  And Tombes would reply:

  ‘A skull full of panic isn’t a clear head.’

  He surveyed the shelves.

  The place was a charnel house.

  His flashlight beam washed over jars. Pathological material. Tissue in suspension. Heart, liver, kidneys, pickled in formaldehyde. Organs bristled with tumourous growths.

  He picked up a jar.

  Sections of lung.

  He picked up another jar.

  An eye.

  ‘Christ.’

  Documents scattered on the floor at the back of the coach.

  Tombes corked the bottle, crouched and shuffled papers.

  Monochrome photographs. A man lashed to an examination table, naked, head shaved. He was screaming, pleading with his captors. Lab coats and surgical gowns in the corner of each frame, sinister gloved and ministering hands clustered around him.

  More pictures. A loaded hypodermic. Desperate, pleading eyes, lips curled in a despairing sob.

  Tombes checked his flashlight. The beam dimmed to weak, grey light. He shook it. It flared and died. He shook it again. Stuttering light.

  Nightmare glimpses of dissection. A bloody bone saw. A peeled scalp. A brain lifted from a skull. A body, skin peeled back, spine exposed.

  Tombes tightened the battery cap until the flashlight shone strong and steady.

  ‘Sick motherfuckers.’

  He took another drink.

  He tried the door to the adjoining carriage. Locked. He wiped glass, tried to peer inside.

  He smashed out the glass with his hammer. He reached through the broken window and unlatched the door. He edged into the carriage, hammer raised.

  A camp bed. A desk. A chair.

  The coach had clearly been home to a single occupant, the sole member of the Bellevue team privileged to enjoy space and solitude.

  A Samsonite suitcase on the floor beside the bed. Tombes lifted the lid with his foot. Toiletries and clothes arranged with fastidious precision. Montaigne, Essays. A rosary.

  Tombes took the bottle from his pocket, uncorked and raised the neck to his lips.

  He glanced at the cot: double-take as he glimpsed silver hair and realised someone lay beneath the rumpled blanket.

  ‘Damn.’

  He slapped the stopper back in the bottle.

  He slowly pulled back the blanket, hammer raised ready to strike.

  A body. An emaciated man. Fifties. Eyes closed, mouth open. Pristine. Uninfected.

  Tombes lowered the hammer and knelt by the cot.

  The man’s hands were folded across his chest. Tombes leaned close. A silver ring. A snake eating its tail.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ he murmured.

  He sat back. He rubbed his eyes and shook to clear his head.

  He unhooked his radio.

  ‘Cloke, you copy? I’ve found him. Can you hear me? Hey. Switch on, dude. I’ve found Ekks.’

  The man held a notebook clasped in his hands. Tombes prized his fingers apart and took the book. A black Moleskine. Scuffed cover, crumpled pages.
<
br />   He thumbed through the leaves. Urgent biro scrawl. Letters and symbols, line after line, page after page. Some kind of code.

  Gasp. Convulsion. Ekks shook and arched his back.

  Tombes dropped the book and gripped the man’s shoulders.

  ‘Holy crap. Hold on. Just hold on.’

  Tombes grabbed his radio.

  ‘Cloke, can you hear me, over? Get down here. Bring the trauma kit. Ekks is alive. The fucker is alive.’

  35

  Lupe rubbed her eyes.

  More maps and charts. She smoothed schematics over the table. She laid them one over another, let the accumulation of translucent onion-skin sheets plot city infrastructure embedded in the soil surrounding the Liberty Line, aka tunnel 38A.

  Gas lines. Fibre-optic conduits. Sewer channels. A dendritic network, layer on layer. Veins and arteries.

  ‘Are you going to help with this shit, or not?’

  Donahue sat against the wall. She chewed an energy bar. She was pale with exhaustion.

  ‘It’s a sealed tunnel. Not much we can do. If we had more men, if we had boring equipment, maybe we could help. Burrow from the street or parking structure.’

  ‘They’re your friends.’

  ‘Tombes is my friend. I don’t know Cloke. He’s nothing to me. Saw him a couple of times at Ridgeway. Hadn’t spoken to him before today.’

  ‘Don’t you want to help Tombes?’

  ‘The charts are useless. Lower Manhattan has been dug so many damned times no one knows what lies beneath the surface. Let the guys see what they can find. Tombes knows what he’s doing. He’s been riding a truck twenty years. He’s kicked a lot of doors, sucked a lot of smoke. He’ll keep his head. If there’s an out, he’ll find it.’

  ‘Fuck that crap,’ said Lupe. ‘We’ve got the maps. They’re relying on us to find a way home.’

  ‘When did you start to give a shit?’

  Lupe crossed the room and sat beside Donahue. She uncapped a bottle of water and swigged.

  ‘If we don’t find something worthwhile in these tunnels, they won’t send the chopper. The Chief doesn’t need any of you. He needs shooters, hard-ass trigger men. Civilians are dead weight. They sit around, draining resources. Useless eaters. Waste of food, waste of water. So if you guys strike out, he won’t send the chopper. Why risk the remaining machine, the pilot, pulling you guys out of the hot zone? You’re all sick. You’ll get sicker. You’ll need beds, treatment, a shitload of medical supplies. Face it, girl. You’re an asset. And you just got expended.’

  ‘Bull.’

  ‘I’d do the same in his position.’

  Donahue wiped her forehead. She inspected her sweat-slick palm.

  ‘It’s started. The sickness.’

  ‘Fight it.’

  ‘How about you?’ asked Donahue. ‘Do you feel it yet?’

  ‘Yeah. Worming into my bones.’

  Lupe straightened. She stretched.

  ‘Galloway. Idiot is high on Dilaudid, convinced he’s going to live for ever. I’ll deal with him. Quick and clean. Wade and Sicknote won’t give a shit. But you got to take my side when Cloke and Tombes get back. Make them understand. It had to be done.’

  Donahue looked away.

  ‘I’m not an executioner. I’m not going to sit here and pronounce a death sentence. You’ve got a free hand, all right? Do whatever you have to do. But I don’t want to be involved.’

  Lupe sipped water. She gestured to the scrolled charts spread on the table.

  ‘Is this everything? Are there any other maps?’

  ‘There’s a bag under the table. Might be a couple more utility schematics. Power-lines, I think. Con Ed.’

  Lupe dragged a holdall from beneath the table. She unzipped, and pulled out a cardboard tube. She popped the cap and unsheathed a couple of charts. She smoothed the translucent sheets over the tunnel map, lined up the surface grid.

  ‘Get over here. Take a look at this.’

  They leaned over the maps.

  ‘Fresh city plan. Can’t be more than a couple of years old. See? New infrastructure. Some kind of pipeline running the length of Lower Broadway, directly beneath the subway. City Water Channel Number Five. An aqueduct. Big son of a bitch. Wider than the Holland Tunnel. Looks like it drains Lower Manhattan. Must be working overtime right now. All that shit running down from the Catskill watershed. A huge volume of water drained into the harbour.’

  ‘I’ll be damned.’

  ‘Maybe there is some kind of inspection shaft, a way of dropping from the subway to the channel beneath.’

  ‘Nothing on the map.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean it’s not there. They have to scour the floor of that tunnel, hands-and-knees if that’s what it takes. Maybe they’ll find a manhole lid, a maintenance hatch. But they have to do it before their flashlights fail. Once those lights give out, they’re good as dead.’

  ‘I’ll tell them to haul ass.’

  Tombes crouched by the bed. He stared at Ekks, watched his chest gently rise and fall.

  ‘He’s breathing. Shallow. But he’s breathing.’

  ‘Hear that?’ said Cloke. ‘Doesn’t sound too good.’

  ‘Yeah. Fluid on his lungs.’

  ‘Want to sink a drain or something?’

  ‘Very last resort.’

  Tombes unzipped a clamshell IFAK. Medical gear stuffed in mesh pockets. He leaned over Ekks, snipped his shirtsleeve wrist-to-shoulder, and slapped a vein. He tore open a sterile wrapper, swabbed, and pressed a catheter into the crook of the man’s elbow. He hung a bag of saline from a ceiling grab rail.

  He checked pulse. He checked blood pressure. He pulled back eyelids, shone a penlight and checked for dilation.

  ‘Well?’ asked Cloke.

  ‘Dying, sure enough. Acute radiation poisoning. Coming apart on a cellular level, like Wade and Sicknote. And he’s malnourished, severely dehydrated. He’s been lying here for days. Should be dead already. Must be a tough son of a bitch.’

  ‘Will he wake?’

  Tombes shrugged.

  ‘I treat burns, breaks and bleeding. House fires and car wrecks. Radiological damage? Not part of my working day.’

  ‘Can you keep him alive? Long enough to get him back to Ridgeway?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘He has to talk. Wake up and talk. We have to keep him alive long enough to get him in front of a microphone. We need to hear what he knows.’

  Cloke took out his Geiger counter. Harsh crackle. He shook his head.

  ‘Fried.’

  ‘What about us?’ asked Tombes. ‘What’s our current dose?’

  Cloke scanned himself. Then he scanned Tombes.

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Won’t kill us outright, but it might bite us on the ass a few years down the line. Cancer. Leukaemia. Not much fun in a world without hospitals.’

  Tombes held out the notebook.

  ‘Ekks had this in his hand. Damn near broke his fingers persuading him to let go.’

  Cloke examined the book. Letters and symbols, page after unbroken page.

  ‘What the hell is this gibberish?’

  ‘Maybe the guy went nuts.’

  He held up a random page.

  ‘This thing is longer than Lord of the Rings. See how the ink changes? He burned through three pens.’ He flipped more pages. ‘See the letters? The handwriting? He took time over this stuff, wanted to get it right. And see here? He struck through a couple of lines, corrected himself.’

  ‘So what?’ asked Tombes. ‘Seen anything like it before?’

  ‘No. Any other documents lying around? Did he have a laptop?’

  ‘Nothing. Just that notebook.’

  ‘Looks like code. Can’t think what else it could be. Might be some kind of weird DNA sequence, I guess.’

  ‘We’re going to have a hard time moving this guy. What if we have to re-enter the water? Maybe we could strap him to the backboard, try to keep him rigid.’

  ‘That kind of presuppos
es there is actually a way out of here,’ said Cloke.

  ‘And we only have two suits. That’s the hard truth. If Ekks is going to make it back to Fenwick, one of us will have to stay behind.’

  Lupe radioed Cloke.

  ‘Come on, man. Pick up. Talk to me.’

  No response.

  She stood in the office doorway and surveyed the ticket hall.

  Sicknote crouched on the floor scribbling his strange phantasmagoria. Swirling vapours. Screaming faces. A black, viscous puddle of madness slowly spreading across the tiles.

  Wade sat on the bench, head thrown back, snoring in his sleep. His face was pale, skin glazed with sweat. He mumbled like he was sinking into a fever.

  Donahue sat on the platform steps, staring down into subterranean darkness.

  Galloway lay unconscious on a pile of equipment bags, bandaged stump spotted with blood.

  ‘Have you all given up?’ shouted Lupe. Her voice echoed through the ticket hall. ‘Are you all just going to sit here and die?’

  They ignored her.

  Lupe returned to the IRT office. She stretched, swung her arms, poured water over her face.

  She took Donahue’s radio from the table.

  ‘Cloke. Switch on your radio, dammit.’

  Cloke’s voice:

  ‘We found Ekks.’

  ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘Just.’

  ‘Talking?’

  ‘Unconscious, but breathing.’

  ‘Can he be moved?’

  ‘I didn’t come all this way to leave him behind.’

  ‘Any other survivors?’

  ‘No. We’re going to look around one more time, try and find a way out. Maybe there is some kind of maintenance access, something we missed. Stairs that will take us up to street level.’

  ‘Check the tunnel floor. Walk the tracks, make a thorough search. Every inch.’

  ‘Did Donnie spot something on the schematics?’

  ‘Maybe. Look for some kind of manhole, some kind of inspection hatch that will take you down to a lower level. Look hard. It could be your only chance.’

  Cloke checked beneath each subway car. He ducked between the wheel bogies and inspected the track bed. Rats stared back at him. He made shoo gestures. They stood their ground.

  ‘Give me your lighter.’

  Tombes handed over his shamrock Zippo.

  Cloke set the lighter to high-flame and wafted fire at the savage-looking rodents. Flame reflected in mean, black eyes. They turned and scurried away.