by TJ Martinell
I did not share their optimism. The drones leaving meant only one thing. They wouldn’t be able to tell friend from foe.
If they couldn’t, how could we?
***
Guarding the printing press building door was a man with hand-held machine gun thrust against his hip. I provided documents confirming my identity and he stood aside. The building’s dark brown exterior was deceiving. It hinted of decay and rot within. Rust ate into the corroding drain pipes hanging over the side. However, once inside everything was modern.
Except for the printing press. Linotype operators worked at the machines preparing the next day’s issue.
A man with a small cap on his head approached me.
“Where is the person in charge?” I asked.
“Outside, near the train tracks.”
“Are the tracks secured?”
“Yeah. Once they get out of our territory they’re fine. Nobody’s gonna touch them. The train owner’s not the kind to piss off.”
“We’re here to make sure nothing happens until then. Just make sure everything in here goes smoothly.”
A narrow corridor brought me to a large room full of crates stacked on top of crates. Guns and ammo inside of them all. Dozens of men were opening them and tossing the contents onto tables. The group was a curious mix of stringers, delivery crews and some errand boys. Yet no tension between any of them.
They probably didn’t know all that I did. Didn’t matter. They realized that whatever was coming, we would all suffer the same fate if we lost.
I selected an M1 Garand from one of the crates. A stringer handed me an ammunition belt. The gun was heavy, but judging by the size of the bullets, I was confident I wouldn’t need to hit the same target twice. Others who hadn’t picked a gun watched me hold it and then grabbed the remaining few.
Thankfully, it wasn’t just our group holding the line. The rest had been dispersed to different parts of the territory. We were tasked with directly protecting the press itself.
Weapons in hand, ammo strapped to our waists and over our shoulders, we silently trudged outside. The clouds had darkened like spilled ink on paper. A light drizzle left us wet as we headed down the street on South Hanford. The street lights offered little to guide us by as we paraded past them. More and more men emerged from the shadows until a thick column formed on the street.
I noticed someone walking near me. It was Griggs. He wore a fedora and a long wool overcoat buttoned up to his neck, making him virtually unrecognizable if it weren’t for that wry grin of his.
“Anybody ever tell ya these clothes itch like hell?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Ever wonder why?”
“No,” I said.
“Figures.”
“They tell you anything?”
“Not much,” he replied. “But they don’t need to.”
We converged on the loading dock overlooking the water and dispersed into smaller groups. I found a shipping crate near the wharf, throwing tarp up to give us some protection from the rain. Griggs held his rifle in his lap like a sleeping infant, attempting to roll another cigarette in his wet fingers. He had his tobacco bag and rolls of paper out and he found himself unable to complete the process without dropping it on the ground. He swore and threw the partially made cigarette away, wiping his damp hair.
“What does the ISA want out of this?” I asked.
Griggs slapped the tarp and let a large collection of rainwater splash over the side. “Didn’t I tell you already? They need the newspapers so they have a reason to exist. Probably why they aren’t using the heavy firepower. They don’t want to destroy us. They’re fine when it’s run by a sock puppet. They’re only upset now because there’s a new guy running the show who doesn’t kiss their ass.”
I abruptly started to cough. It got so violent I doubled over. Alarmed, I cleared my throat repeatedly and drank from a bottle of water in my coat. I didn’t even want to think it had to do with the cigarettes.
Griggs’ expression seemed like it had been permanently chiseled into his face. “In all seriousness, kid, I don’t think the boys at the Examiner are better or worse than your boys here. They just play for a different team. The only reason I’m with you is because I couldn’t do what you did to McCullen. I couldn’t bump off the top dog and get away with it. If I could, I’d still be there.”
His eyes swerved to the right as he stood up, his fingers pressed firmly against his rifle. I looked out into the darkened water to see what had caught his attention. There appeared to be nothing.
Gradually, the endless murmur of boat engines grew louder.
A large power engine revved closer to our position. Mounted machine guns on it fired on us. Griggs and I dove and rolled along the ground, then ran to the shipping crate. No one shot back. It was clearly a trick to have us give away our position.
Intense lights lit up the entire area. Remaining out of sight, I took a quick glance to see they were old Coast Guard boats. The gunners fired in all directions.
A lone shot took out one of the boat lights. More well-placed shots eliminated the gunners on the deck. The rest of us on the island joined in. We all went for the floodlights. Once they were destroyed, the boats didn’t have a chance.
On the lead boat, the machine gunner had been taken out and was lying against the turret like a discarded doll. The skipper engaged in a series of evasive maneuvers. The other gunboats kept firing and then sped away, only to come back and open up on us once more. One of our men fired off flares above the water. Its red aurora illuminated the sky and left the gunboats exposed. The remaining gunners were quickly picked off. The skippers then turned back and fled again. Except this time, we knew they wouldn’t return.
There were no cheers as we regrouped.
It was not over. Not that easily.
The ground started to glow. We turned to the street behind us. Several blocks away an unknown building was being consumed by a large inferno. Swirls of blackened smoke vanished in the night’s sky like departing souls to the abyss. A deep sinking feeling dropped into our gut as we gawked at the building, dreading that our hopes had burned with it.
A voice rang out like battle cry, cut off by a loud gunshot.
Then the gunfire erupted everywhere.
The fire was our only guide as we navigated through the streets. Once we reached the actual fighting, we struggled to tell friend from foe of the murky figures lurking in windows and huddled by the sidewalks.
Griggs and I went left, staying close to the railroad tracks.
When we reached South Hanford Street we were confronted by a delivery crew hiding behind barbed wire.
“Is that the printing press building on fire?” I asked.
“No, they dynamited the building across the street,” one of them said. “The printin’ press is fine, but it ain’t gonna last long. The walls are bulletproof, but if those sonuva bitches got explosives, they’ll just blow the damn thing up.”
“How did they get here?”
“The sewers, we think. Others broke through on a large truck, but we managed to destroy it. Now that street is bottled up good.”
“Are you assigned to guard this position?”
“Not quite sure. They told us to guard the tracks, make sure they don’t blow ‘em to hell. But seems they’re being more direct.”
I waved toward the press building. “It doesn’t matter what happens to these tracks if we got nothing to put on the train.”
The defenses around Hanford Street where the press was located had been set up well. Barriers around the structure, dotted with sharpshooters and machine guns, would ward off smaller vehicles and men. Across the street, the aflame building crumbled. More smoke poured into the air.
The disorganized fights gradually settled down as the two sides took time to reform and assess their position. During the break, we enjoyed the relative silence with a cigarette and a flask of whiskey a
stringer passed around.
The respite ended without warning when smoke grenades landed on the open road. As they ignited, the enemy appeared en masse and charged. The rat-a-tat-tat of Tommy guns and the clang of M1 Garands played against the hyper pitched siren shriek of hi-tech rifles as they tried to force their way into our perimeter. Bodies fell, but the smoke made it impossible to target them accurately.
By the time we could discern them, they were right on top of us.
Tom’s pistol proved invaluable as I fired at one silhouette after another. Closer to the front of our position, the men brandishes knives as the struggle devolved into a primitive warfare. They wrestled in the muddied road, pushing the mortally wounded aside to wallow in the gutters before death came for them.
Moving forward to reinforce our right, I stumbled into a man I couldn’t make out. We stared and slowly approached each other.
It was Jamie, holding a knife dripping with blood.
“Hey, boss,” he said. “Ya boss said ya needed help.”
He smiled at me as if waiting for me to compliment him. I greeted him instead by shoving him aside to the shoot the man on his left. I helped him up, and we moved away from the fighting. Another building down the street shot up in flames as we regrouped with Griggs and headed back to the press building.
The chief operator for the press was standing there in the main room with his hand resting on his sidearm strapped to his chest.
“The printing is underway,” he said. “We should be done any second.”
I headed for the loading dock and helped one of the operators open the overhead doors for the trucks waiting outside. A forklift crew arrived with pallets of newspapers and filled up the trucks. The outside defenses were still strong, but shots still managed to get through. We protected the drivers inside the loading area until their vehicles were ready.
As the drivers headed back to their cabs, the press chief operator ran up to me.
“There’s a special delivery for the train coming in ten minutes,” he said. “We have a different agreement with this train’s owner. Nothing can happen to it while it’s in our territory or we’re held responsible.”
“Then we’ll make sure nothing does.”
The forklift driver was already filling up the semi-truck with pallets. Wary of sabotage or surprise assaults, we formed a protective circle outside. Luckily, the fighting seemed to have slackened off on our side of SoDo, the chaos shifting over to the east, and we encountered few hostiles. The loading completed, the driver already had the engine started for us as we rode on the sides.
We went down 1st Avenue, finding it cluttered with corpses. Griggs sprayed bullets into the bushes, while Jamie alerted the stringers at the barricade ahead of us to clear the road. South Lander Street offered little resistance as we turned left and entered an old parking lot. The truck driver made another turn, placing the container parallel to the railroad tracks. We emptied out of the truck, surveying the parking lot before approaching the tracks.
A short line of cars sat on the tracks, one of them bare except for a crane attached to the side.
A man appeared on one of the cars, followed by another ten. He approached us with clipboard and a disconcerted look. Acting as though we weren’t there, he called to the truck driver by his first name. The driver insisted they load right away, but the presumed train engineer insisted he sign off on the delivery.
Darkened figures near the waterline attacked us. We kept them pinned down as the loading process went on. The gunboats reappeared in what seemed to be another presumed landing, but our stringers manning the rooftops sent one of them beneath the surface with an RPG. The remaining lacked the stomach for more and fled.
Finally, the train car was loaded. The engineer barked to his men to begin securing the container. Working the harnesses and bolt mechanisms, they locked it down onto the floor. The train driver saluted us and headed up to where the dormant engine sat. The whistle blared three times as it rattled across the tracks, north into the International District.
We had no time to relish the accomplishment. A survey of area made it clear there was still a fight. Our men had counterattacked from the north, pushing down while simultaneously attacking from the center.
The priority now was to preserve the press building.
Amid the din, the roar of large vehicle engine overcame all other noise. A large refurbished truck plowed through a building across from the press like a lion smashing through its cage, heading straight for the press.
No order needed. We poured everything we had at the van. The front tires exploded, causing the vehicle to lean onto the wheel axle. But it didn’t stop. Inertia carried its heavy frame through the barricades in front of the press. It smacked up against the side of the building.
It lay motionless like a dead animal.
Then it disappeared as a bomb inside exploded.
I was thrown onto my back, temporarily deaf from the blast. My skin burned as my face got a taste of the heat. Rolling up into a ball, I hugged one of the barricades and waited out the secondary explosions, too dazed to contemplate what I would find when I got up.
When I finally did, I found Griggs helping Jamie to his feet. I let them be as I approached the press building now shrouded in the smoke. I was not an explosives expert, but I could tell the device detonated had been made of a unique compound. There was no odor. The residual flames were weak, the heat mild as I approached them and examined the wreckage.
The front half of the building had been destroyed. Yet there was a small hope the presses hadn’t been affected. The bomb had failed to ignite the wooden structure beyond the blast radius, and as I stared at it men arrived with hoses and buckets of water. They dosed the remaining flames until all that was left was smoldering debris and blackened metal frames.
Still, I had to know for sure.
I brushed at the remains and kicked charcoaled wood, pushing through to find the printing press, miraculously unharmed by the blast. The press operator was accounting for all his workers when he saw me and shook his head.
“Anything damaged?” I asked.
“Not by the bomb,” he chuckled darkly. “It should have taken out the building. It must have failed to fully ignite. But one of the saboteurs managed to sneak in and mangle the linotype. It will take some time to fix it.
“How long?”
“Not sure,” he said as he wiped his face. “A day, depending on the damage. Our only mechanic who knows how to repair it is on his way. Until he looks at it we can’t know.
“We have very limited replacement parts for the linotype and presses. If they are damaged and we don’t have the exact part on hand, we will have to build it ourselves. If we can’t, it’s worthless.”
I approached the machine like a pilgrim would a holy shrine, with reverence. If it were wrecked, the newspaper would die. If it died, other newspapers would fall under the thumb of the ISA-run coalition. Eventually, they would be able to push into the other territories. The many voices would become one voice, the voice already dominating society.
This voice could not be silenced.
I placed my hand upon the press and sighed like a theater actor tiring of a long performance, realizing that my hour upon this stage was not yet done.
***
No celebration in the streets. There were no cheers, no shouts of victory. The men picked up the many bodies and segregated them by their allegiance, casually piling the enemy on a truck. The men held their weary heads low, but with dignity.
A line of wounded men formed near the side door to the building, tending to their own care on makeshift benches. Someone brought out a bottle of schnapps and passed it around along with a pack of cigarettes. Another man offered a jar of homemade vodka after taking a long swig.
Griggs limped up to the man and asked for a drink. After he took it he wiped his mouth and clutched his abdomen.
“Your wound open up?” I asked.
“I’ll live.”
A black coupe drove up the road and stopped in front of me. The passenger door opened and a man stepped out and asked if I was Roy Farrington. When I replied affirmatively he said Olan wanted to know about my status.
“I’m alive,” I said.
“He wants to chat.”
Before we drove away, I told Griggs and Jamie to find a place to stay for the night where they wouldn’t be found and then report back to the newspaper the next morning. The ride back offered a vivid panorama of the destruction throughout SoDo. Block after block offered the sight of burnt buildings smoldering like day-old campfires. Empty casings were strewn over the road beside bodies that had yet to be claimed and collected.
A large crater in front of the newspaper showed how close they had gotten to us.
The newsroom was empty, save for several writers who hardly left and were known to sleep in the empty rooms. Olan was perusing a file on his desk, his hands on top of his head. When I came in he pushed it aside and filled two glasses with single malt whiskey. As we raised our glass he made a toast, the words of which I didn’t catch as I threw back the entire contents and closed my eyes.
“Not bad for the first day on the job, eh?” he asked.
He sounded fatigued, but cheerful.
“You must have had low expectations,” I remarked.
“I don’t see how it could come out any better,” he said. “It can’t look good for them.”
“What if the ISA decides to get directly involved?”
“Then we’ve got bigger problems.”
He looked up at the clock and grinned but behind it I knew there was a frown hinting of what we both knew would come tomorrow.
“Go home,” he said. “By the way, you look like hell.”
“No. If I looked like hell I’d be drugged, in a uniform, and sitting in a cell listening to the sound of nothing.”
I went directly to the third floor. A guard posted in the corridor was half asleep. I walked past him with hardly a word exchanged and went inside. Beds dotted the room, some of them surrounded by curtains. A skeleton staff of two nurses and a doctor were huddled by the wall, whispering to one another.
