by Bruno Flexer
After an eternity, the van stopped moving, and Tom dropped down. He realized he was now lying on one of the van's walls. The van was on its side! Tom looked outside through a hole, but it took him an instant to understand what he was seeing.
Something was speeding towards them, a great truck of some sort with a long row of huge double wheels. The truck was so large, the road trembled, the Serpents' van along with it. There was something wrong: that is, something wrong aside from the monster truck that was accelerating towards them in a course that would lead to a fatal crash. A second later Tom realized what was wrong: Their van's engine was dead!
The van suddenly groaned and moved, tipping over, falling and landing on its wheels. Tom was flung to the floor. He managed to glimpse Captain Emerson returning to the driver's compartment and calmly turning the ignition key. The Ford engine started on the first try, and Captain Emerson put the gear in drive and pushed the gas pedal all the way to the floor. The van lurched into motion, but Tom could only focus on the lower section of the huge truck that was speeding towards them. Along with its trailer, it seemed that the row of double wheels surging in Tom's direction was endless.
Tom again crashed against the rear doors as Captain Emerson twisted the wheel savagely and the van moved away. A great, groaning noise shook the van while the great semitrailer tried to match paths, but the huge truck could not turn as fast. The van sped away unharmed, leaving the truck far behind.
Tom did not even move while a continuous shudder gripped the van. The van was scraping along the concrete barrier, which quickly peeled off the right part of the van, tearing away the front passenger door and all of the skin on the Ford's right side. Tom looked in horror as the van trembled and screamed its metallic scream, but a moment later, Tom cringed and lay on the floor again while crashing noises exploded right outside the van.
Nothing more happened, and a moment later the shuddering stopped, and the torn and damaged van went on its way unimpeded. Tom slowly raised his head and joined Lieutenant Ramirez and Sergeant Jebadiah, who had stayed at the rear of the van all this time without moving.
"We'll shake the pursuers and seek cover. Our priority is survival and attaining concealment till nightfall," Emerson said calmly.
Tom saw an incredible sight behind them. More than twenty trucks of all sizes were burning behind them, jammed together where they had crashed against each other and the sides of the road. Tom glanced ahead. They were clear. FDR Drive was open before them, and the great, rectangular United Nations building lay straight ahead.
Now that he thought about it, Tom had heard Sergeant Jebadiah shout a few times, and even Lieutenant Ramirez had cursed twice, but the captain had kept his calm composure, driving their van ahead. Tom stared at the captain's back in fear. What kind of man could do what the captain just did?
"Contact," Captain Emerson sent softy and calmly as always, but something in the intonation made Tom look forward. Tom's heart sank inside him.
From the direction of the tunnel beneath the United Nations building, a veritable army was emerging. Hummer utility vehicles with machine guns mounted on their roofs were the first of a long column rising from the tunnel, a column that contained several M2 Bradley armored personnel carriers and, as Tom could even see, one M1 Abrams tank. The military vehicles were moving in their direction and aiming their weapons at them, machine guns and larger cannons swiveling to target them.
"The enemy is mobilizing the military forces it captured," Captain Emerson said.
"Sir, we can't take all of them," Sergeant Jebadiah said, holding his Barrett rifle in his hand and scanning the military column that was still emerging from the tunnel.
"I count more than twenty Hummers, four Bradleys and at least one Abrams tank. More are coming," Tom recited lifelessly. The first duty of an intelligence officer it to enumerate the enemy forces he is seeing. "Sir, there must be more. My observations from 70 Pine Tower indicated the closest military forces groups are much larger."
Tom glanced to the side and was not surprised to see the people in the buildings motionless and staring. Targeting, Tom thought. The enemy must be using them to track us so that it can send its forces against us. It would have been better if the people had some expression, but seeing their deadpan, lifeless eyes was worse than anything Tom could have imagined. As far up as Tom looked, he saw windows filled with people looking down: even on upper floors so high that Tom could barely see them.
Captain Emerson kept driving straight ahead, straight at the enemy forces advancing towards them. Tom felt their battered Ford van shake as the captain made it gain speed.
Two loud metallic clinks inside the van sounded as Lieutenant Ramirez readied his rifle and moved ahead, quickly followed by Sergeant Ramirez.
"Hold fire," Captain Emerson commanded.
Tom zoomed in on the military vehicles moving towards them, now less than five hundred yards away. Tom realized that FDR exit 9 was right in front of them, less than one hundred yards away. Yet Captain Emerson moved ahead without any sign of turning.
"Sir—the exit—"
"Roger that, Lieutenant Riley," Captain Emerson said.
The 25-millimeter Bradley cannons tracked the Ford van, but Captain Emerson still did not turn.
"Why aren't they firing?" Tom asked.
"They're waiting. We're going right to them," Sergeant Jebadiah said. Tom's mind, which never stopped thinking and analyzing, noted that this was probably the first time Jebadiah had neglected to add "Sir" to a sentence addressed to an officer.
"Lieutenant, did you pick up any radio transmissions?"
"What?" Tom couldn't understand what the captain wanted. Tom's gaze was riveted to the black bores of the dozens of cannons aiming at them.
"Radio transmissions, Lieutenant Riley. Command and control. The enemy is coordinating attacks directed at us by considerably well-coordinated forces. Have you picked up any radio transmissions that might pinpoint the enemy's position?"
Tom's fear of the captain was just reinforced. Captain Emerson had the presence of mind to think of the mission through all the mayhem. Tom needed a moment to deliberate.
"No—no—no, Sir. I've had all sensors working all the time, but the only transmissions I've picked up are coming from us."
"Roger."
The van turned sharply and took the exit, going over the tunnel and moving onto East 42nd Street. Tom saw that, in addition to the people in the windows, every man, woman and child on the streets were standing stock still and looking at them with the same cold, dead expression, unafraid even as the van sped a few feet away from them on the street.
The van shuddered once as Captain Emerson crashed into a lone motorcycle driving down the street towards them, but otherwise, they were the only ones on the street.
"Multiple contacts behind. Hummers and Bradleys," Sergeant Jebadiah reported. The military vehicle group that came from the FDR Drive tunnel was following them.
A thought entered Tom's mind that made him look at the city: at the flowers and plants carefully planted along the sidewalks, at the empty storefronts and the naked buildings. New York City had not been transformed into a dead city. Tom realize that this would have been easier to accept and less frightening. What sent waves of fear down Tom’s Serpent’s spine was that New York City had been transformed into an alien place.
Tom thought about the expressionless faces on the people on the street, people just standing and looking at them zoom past. The red anger he had felt, anger caused by his failure to find the enemy, was slowly being smothered by fear. What if the enemy really was an alien? What if it was something beyond Tom's ability to understand or find? Something so strange they had no hope of defeating?
Just then, a number of Hummer vehicles joined the chase, coming in from both sides of 3rd Avenue and turning to follow them, a scant one hundred yards behind. Tom glanced to the sides and saw Bradley armored personnel carriers advancing towards the street they were on from both sides, ready to box the
m in and cut off any escape routes.
Tom felt the van jump ahead as Captain Emerson flooring the gas pedal, and then it suddenly slowed down and turned sharply, Captain Emerson twisting the wheel as fast as it would go.
Five Abrams tanks stood one hundred yards away from them, blocking their path, their cannons pointed straight at them.
Explosions, louder than anything Tom had ever heard before, engulfed his world. His Serpent, a unique two-thousand-pound armored fighting machine, flew in the midst of these explosions, a torn leaf carelessly tossed about by a remorseless storm.
Tom's sensors managed to get glimpses of 42nd Street—glass-covered buildings and wide sidewalks—and the van itself revolving around him faster than he could follow before his world became a fiery red inferno that drowned everything.
Chapter 21
Day Five, 42nd Street, New York City
"Evacuate the van!"
It was a senseless command for a man drowning under waves of pure red fire, a man whose world had ceased to hold any meaning, a man who had no control over …
Wait! Tom slowly figured out he could still think. He tried moving his hands and legs and felt responses flowing back into his mind. He was still alive! It took some time for this to sink in.
Tom also needed time to figure out what his sensors were reporting. Colors and sensations resolved around him and Tom understood he was inside a Ford van that had been hit by heavy cannon fire and was now burning, the red flames and black oily smoke obscuring everything in Tom's field of vision.
"Grand Central Terminal is deserted. Advance and secure positions. Move."
A wave of hate as red as the flames engulfing Tom's body now engulfed Tom's mind. How can the captain remain so calm? How can he still function under all they have gone through?
Tom started moving, partly because he instinctively realized why he had started to hate Captain Emerson. It was because his fear of the captain was growing greater.
Tom got up, the electric motors in his body whining. A section of the van's burning chassis impeded his path, and Tom stumbled, falling down. A large Serpent’s hand steadied him and pulled him back up.
“Up you go, Sir,” Jebadiah sent. The sergeant speared right through the van’s chassis with his fingers, tearing it open with all of his Serpent's strength. A long pole, the van's driveshaft, screamed in metallic protest as it bent and then broke cleanly in two.
Tom noticed his left hand was damaged, two fingers inoperative and the wrist partly immobilized. He stared at the damage in his hand in shock. Seeing it now, while under fire in an enemy-occupied city, was very much different than being damaged on the Fort Belvoir training range, knowing repair teams stood ready to fix him up again.
Sergeant Jebadiah applied constant and firm pressure on Tom’s shoulder, and they advanced through the debris and fires. Tom realized they were now under a building's front on the opposite side of the street from Grand Central Terminal, at Pershing Square. He glimpsed two black shadows move across the street and leap up to the elevated Park Avenue metal bridge, the road going over 42nd Street and around Grand Central Terminal.
Tom started to move when he saw the tanks, fifty yards downrange on 42nd Street, aiming their cannons right at him, staring at him with 120-millimeter smooth-bore cannons, their black holes about to fill with fire that even his Serpent's armor would not be able to defeat, not at this range, not with their depleted uranium armor-piercing rounds.
Move, Lieutenant Tom Riley! You're not a Keyboard Warrior anymore!
“Let’s go, Sir.”
Tom forced his shaking Serpent legs to follow Sergeant Jebadiah and propel him away from the van, a scant moment before an explosive fireball blew it apart, sending shrapnel and debris all over, some pinging sharply against Tom's armored back. Tom felt the sergeant stumble at his side, and the sergeant’s hand parted from Tom’s shoulder.
“Don’t mind me, Sir, you go on right ahead. I’ll be right behind you, Sir,” Sergeant Jebadiah sent.
Tom did not look back. He ran onwards, leapt up to the Park Avenue metal bridge and ran as fast as he could towards the huge barred arched windows on Grand Central Terminal's façade.
More explosions of various timbres and strengths erupted all over the place, around, behind and in front of Tom but he ignored everything and ran onwards, his sensors fixed on one thing only, a jagged tear in the main arched window, a tear big enough for a Serpent to enter.
Tom stumbled twice, once when he lost his footing when a small caliber shell exploded right beneath him and another time when a large explosion pushed him to the side, almost making him drop down from the elevated part of Park Avenue encircling Grand Central Terminal. Small fires and shrapnel flew everywhere, some hitting Tom's Serpent and creating dull smacking impact noises.
Tom persevered. He grabbed the metal railing with his good, right hand and pushed himself to his feet, in the process tearing the railing completely out. Then he leapt up, virtually flying and crashing right through the huge arched window into Grand Central Terminal's main concourse.
Tom fell and rolled on the floor, just glad to be alive. For the moment! Tom skidded on the smooth, pink marble on the floor and his claws dug deep furrows, creating large cracks before he was able to stop.
Tom slowly got up and looked around him. It was obvious that, in contrast to the rest of sparkling clean Manhattan, Grand Central Terminal had been abandoned. A thick coat of dust covered everything and litter was everywhere. Actually, not litter, but things people usually hold in their hands. It was an assortment of old cellular phones, handbags, luggage of all types, brown paper bags with three-year-old donuts, soda cans and mineral water bottles rolling around, and even two or three laptops. The things people were holding when the enemy took over Manhattan.
The stores were all abandoned, but they had not been removed like the stores and coffee houses on Manhattan's streets. In here, they were just deserted. Actually, Tom saw that some had been looted. Not by vandals, but by people who had taken away anything of value and interest, heaping things they had no interest in to the sides. The enemy had taken what it wanted and left everything else.
The ticket-vending machines were dead, as were the train arrival and departures signs. There was power, and the great chandeliers on the ceiling, as well as most of the lamps, were still lit, though wherever a light had burned out, it had not been replaced. Even the famous opal, four-faced clock was still working. All the United States flags had been removed however.
Sergeant Jebadiah entered the concourse then, thick black smoke rising up from the stump of his right leg, sparks and electric hisses issuing from the damaged section on the right of his body, an ugly tear rising from the right leg stump to the Serpent’s right shoulder. The composite armor was bent and torn, revealing the gleaming interior mechanical and electrical components of the personal battle tank.
“Jebadiah!”
“I’m all right, Sir,” the sergeant sent and stumbled to a low window, pulling himself up and bringing his rifle to bear. “I’m an Indiana hog farmer, Sir. We’re tough nuts to crack. If my ol’ pa can see the hogs with one leg crippled, so can I, Sir.”
Tom cringed while shots exploded across the main concourse, echoing and reverberating in the huge cavernous hall. Emerson, Jebadiah and Ramirez were firing out, their Barrett rifles thundering, while spent cartridges rolled on the marble floor, and empty magazines left rectangular imprints in the dusty concourse.
“Not a Keyboard Warrior anymore,” Tom murmured. He got up, drew his own rifle, loaded it and headed towards the other three Serpents.
“Lieutenant Riley, find the enemy,” Captain Emerson sent without even turning to Tom.
“But—“
“Find the enemy, Lieutenant Riley. It’s sundown in one hour. We'll hold this position till sundown and then change positions under cover of night. Find the enemy.”
Tom looked at the three Serpents firing away, their black, matt armor chinked and dented, dense, b
lack smoke from their rifle shots engulfing them. The Serpents fired two or three shots outside and then moved to another location or leaped up to an elevated position, trying to surprise and disorient the enemy. Even Jebadiah hobbled from position to position, never keeping one more than ten or fifteen seconds.
"Visual on three Bradley’s at 42nd and Madison."
"Light them up."
"One Abrams moving up Park Avenue."
"Wait for a clear Hellfire shot."
"Taking heavy machine-gun fire here."
"Source?"
"Unknown number of Hummers closing fast from East 42nd."
"Roger. Change position and take them out."
"Incoming troop trucks."
"Get those soft targets first. Conserve missile for hard targets. Fire at will."
"Nice shooting, Ramirez. Engage new targets on approach from East 44th Street."
They were being attacked from all sides, but Tom only looked at Jebadiah, pulling himself from position to position, reporting on his radio, holding his rifle with his left hand, his right barely operable. Jebadiah must have sensed Tom’s gaze on his damaged body.
“Sir, find the enemy. That is all that matters. Don’t mind me, I’ll be all right.”
Tom went and sat down cross-legged on the marble floor, his rifle on his knees. He pulled back the armor panel protecting his left-arm computer and started working, bringing up his computer’s display onto half of his field of vision and opening the sensor recordings display.
The Grand Central Terminal concourse trembled repeatedly as shellfire hit the old building, shaking loose tiles and bricks and causing the chandeliers to swing to and fro. Balconies and stairwell railings collapsed on the grand central staircase, quickly followed by shards of glass as the enemy continued pouring fire into the building. Bullets flew inside the concourse and pieces of marble and concrete exploded every which way with concussive force.
