Empty Cities

by E. E. Isherwood

  “We should go that way.” Ted pointed where she’d indicated. “Since you’re familiar with the area.”

  She flung her head back to clear away her bangs. “I’m familiar with the area, but not how things are now. Even seeing these same streets doesn’t feel right. The last time I was through this tunnel entrance, cars were stacked up for miles in every direction. Now, everything is stopped. The city is dead. Everyone…is dead.”

  Ted pulled his rifle over his shoulder and held it in a comfortable two-handed grip. It was the stance soldiers and airmen used when they wanted to convey a sense of wary calm. “We’ll run up the ramp and get to your street, then we’ll take it slow.”

  He worried bringing Emily back to her home turf might have been a mistake, especially if her husband was there. It was a fact he’d overlooked until that moment. Still, given the option of walking into strange land or the familiar, he chose the latter.

  Emily already had her rifle at the ready.

  “Go!” he ordered.

  They threaded the needle through the traffic snarl, always with one eye on the surrounding buildings and one ear on the sky. There would probably be no better place to put snipers than at the exits of the bridges and tunnels. Drones could fly above the open waterways bracketing Manhattan, always on the prowl for movement inside the urban core.

  Neither spoke when they cleared the vehicles and hopped onto the sidewalk of 10th Avenue. The six-lane road was filled with vehicles all silently facing north. Emily looked at them like they’d soon start moving, but he only saw how exposed they were to overhead surveillance.

  “Em,” he whispered, “let’s keep moving.”

  Emily looked at him funny. He thought it was because he’d used a nickname for her, but she seemed to snap out of her reverie. “Oh, right. This way.” She motioned the same direction the traffic had been flowing.

  They ran for several blocks, which gave him time to wonder if he had offended her. Most of his awareness focused on listening for bad guys, including the whump-whump sound of that big helicopter constantly at the edge of his hearing. However, he also found time to second-guess how he’d addressed his boss.

  He followed her until she stopped at a street corner.

  “Look,” she exclaimed.

  All concerns about addressing a superior slipped away as he came up beside her. A long line of blue and gray school uniforms littered the sidewalk for fifty yards. Little pairs of pants were mostly in one row, while girls’ jumpers were in the other one.

  Without thinking, he held out his arms and she put her head on his chest. The position left him looking at the fallen children, but he didn’t get choked up like she did. He’d grieved yesterday when those tiny soccer uniforms blew over the highway. Today, he was going to help his friend.

  Emily didn’t take long. She’d pulled down her face covering and wiped her nose in an unflattering way, but then she stepped back from him. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve got to be stronger about scenes like this. I’m not being very presidential.”

  “It’s all right. I’m not going to lie to you, ma’am, but I saw something like this yesterday and it ripped out a piece of my soul. Since then, I’ve been keeping myself sane by swearing I’m going to get the bastards who did this. Someone, maybe the people driving those drones, used a new weapon on us.” He pointed to the uniforms. “These pour souls are counting on us to hold it together and fight back.”

  She fixed her face mask. He got the sense she did it to hide her embarrassed expression.

  “Emily, listen to me. I know this is horrible, but it’s good you saw it now. It’s going to make you stronger…” He thought it over for a few seconds. “This is total war on a scale beyond anything in human history. If we don’t shed tears for this disaster, we don’t deserve to be called humans at all. No one on Earth would see this as a weakness, president or not.”

  The expression behind the mask flickered happiness for a moment. “Thanks, Ted. I needed to hear that.” She turned toward the school uniforms and spoke in a respectful voice. “I’m sorry, boys and girls. I’m sorry, everyone. It’s like he said: we’re going to get the bastards who did this to you.”

  Without waiting for him, she strode out into the street to go to the next block over.

  He followed, sure the helicopter rotor noises had gotten louder.

  St. Louis, MO

  Tabby’s knees wobbled as she faced the shotgun, but the barrel wasn’t pointed at her. Gus had it aimed at Peter.

  “No! Don’t shoot! Please!” She still had her gun aimed at him, but she made a split-second judgment not to fire it. Even if she hit the guy, it seemed likely he would also fire his shotgun, and one of her kids would be dead.

  The old man seemed like he might pull the trigger anyway, which led her to put more pressure on her own trigger, but Gus took his eyes off the boy and glanced over to her. “Lower your gun and I don’t have to hurt anyone.”

  “Why are you doing this? Are you with them?” She tilted her head toward the Arch, hoping he understood what she meant.

  “Hell no. Those people killed my friends in the department. I want nothing to do with them, except to take this here gun down there and blow them away.”

  Tabby’s arms wanted to shake as she held the gun with both hands. Audrey and Donovan had guns, too, though they were already through the door, so they were out of Gus’s sight. Audrey looked like she might come back in, but Tabby didn’t want to escalate the standoff, so she stood inside the frame to block her.

  “You could have just asked,” she stammered.

  Vinny stood off to the side of Gus. “Come on, guys. We’re all friends, right?”

  “Vin, get her gun. Get all the guns. We’re going to fight back.”

  The young guy didn’t move, which made her realize how fast she’d been put in the position to use her pistol. Within the space of seconds, two men threatened to disarm and do her harm. The gun was the only thing preventing that from happening.

  “No,” she said dryly. “Take Peter’s shotgun if you must, but we’re not giving up any of the others. I need them to keep the kids safe.” If he didn’t see the logic of why, then there was no reasoning with him.

  Gus aimed square at Peter’s face. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, least of all a kid, but we need those guns and we’re going to get them.”

  Vinny sidestepped to within a few feet of his co-worker. “Gus, I don’t want to hurt them. Let’s take the one shotgun and call it good.” He looked at Tabby as if to say Sorry, I don’t want to be a part of this.

  Gus held the shotgun steady, but then he looked beyond Tabby, through the door. “Oh, crap, they’re already here.”

  A woman’s computerized voice interrupted. “Please state your name.”

  Tabby didn’t want to take her eyes off Gus, but she had to see what was outside the door. When she looked back over to the man, he was still focused on the lobby, so she took a chance.

  It was the floating white drone from earlier. By all appearances, it had come in through the automatic front doors and now hovered about six feet off the ground in the station lobby. It was closest to Donovan and Audrey.

  “Please state your name,” it repeated.

  “Audrey Hampton,” the young girl stammered with fear.

  Tabby wanted to tell her not to give any information to the strange machine, but she couldn’t decide where to focus her attention. Would the drone harm Audrey in the front, or would Gus attack Peter at the back?

  “Please confirm social security number,” the white floating machine asked.

  “Why?” Tabby replied, finally having enough.

  It hung there for a few seconds as if thinking about whether to respond.

  “This area has been designated as inhospitable due to an industrial accident. Social security ident requested to ensure proper dispatch of emergency services extraction vehicle. Please confirm social security number to ensure speedy recovery.”

  Tabby wanted to believe it. Her
entire mission was to get the three kids to safety and having a police car show up was her greatest wish, but this wasn’t what she expected.

  “Where are the police?” she inquired of the drone. “We need help right this second!”

  The drone’s fans tilted a tiny bit, which made it drift closer to Donovan. “Please state your name.”

  Behind her, Vinny pleaded with Gus. “Give me the gun. We can’t fight them by threatening Tabby and these kids.”

  The older guy grunted. “Stay away.”

  Tabby imagined the entire room was rigged to detonate with explosives. It was a mineral-extraction procedure she’d often explained to visitors while doing tours in the Bonne Terre lead mine. Thinking about home made her nostalgic to get back there someday, and that would never happen if Gus kept threatening her people.

  She re-oriented on the man. “Please, this is what we want, isn’t it? Help is on the way.”

  Given a choice between the authorities and a crazy guy with a gun aimed her way, she was going with the authorities.

  “They’re not here to help,” Gus began. “It’s with those people down by the Arch. You saw all the drones, didn’t you? This is one of them.”

  Tabby wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. Did the sewer men really see their friends get shot, or was it all a ruse to get her and the kids away from help, so the men could rob them? That suddenly made a lot of sense.

  She turned back to the drone. “Whoever you are, we need help. This man is threatening my friends.” By taking a step back, she made sure the drone saw Gus.

  That seemed to anger him. “You don’t know what you’re doing. They’re going to kill us all!” Gus lifted his shotgun and re-aimed it at Peter. “Give me all your guns, dammit!”

  Tabby sought some spark of sanity in Vinny’s blue eyes. Why wasn’t he stopping his partner from going down this path? Was he too scared to act, or did he want to disarm them, too?

  Like any good Mexican standoff, she raised her pistol again and made sure it was on the target. Her hands had never stopped their shaking, but she fought to hold them steady for at least one solid shot.

  The fuse had been lit, and the explosion was coming. There was no way in hell she was going to let Peter die like this.

  CHAPTER 20

  Poor Sisters Convent, Oakville, MO

  “Please return to your assigned housing unit. Help is on the way.” The woman’s computerized voice sounded as even and unemotional as before, but the order had a little intimidation to it. She’d spent the past few years inside the cloistered convent taking orders from Abbess Mary Francis. She never once had an uneasy feeling about a request.

  Perhaps it was the dog. She glanced back at Deogee. She refused to get out of the van, even though she’d opened the door for her to climb down.

  “Maybe we’ll just wait out here. I don’t have anything I really need inside.”

  The machine seemed to think about it. The floating box didn’t do anything different, but it was a sense she got. It was a little like how she guessed her new dog’s mood based on its behavior. For a machine sent to rescue her, its standoffish attitude was disconcerting rather than reassuring.

  “Negative. Help has been assigned to your postal address. You must return there to ensure proper help from approaching assistance.” The drone moved from its position next to the driveway and floated over the walkway. By all appearances, it wanted to lead her up the walkway and inside.

  That threw up another red flag, but she had no idea why.

  Deogee still sat on her haunches inside the minivan. It was as if she wanted her to refuse the order of the computer voice; she showed her how it was done.

  “I’m sorry, but me and my dog are going to wait inside the van for the next seven minutes.” She walked around Mary Francis’s vehicle, then climbed back inside. The voice had told her help was coming in a few minutes, so there couldn’t be any reason why she had to be inside the building to receive them.

  That made the drone speed over to her. “Warning. You are ordered to return to your structure. This is a mandate by the St. Louis County Police Department for your own protection.”

  It seemed wrong to disobey this authority figure, but if Deogee was going to act strange about it, she was going to do the same. The instructions made no sense to her, and when the authorities finally arrived, she was going to have a word with them about the way these computer-boxes talked to her.

  “You have three minutes to comply with directive. Unable to deviate.”

  She remained concerned, but also found a little humor in the soulless voice. “What does that mean? Why does it matter if we sit in this minivan or go in there? Are we in danger?”

  The box readjusted outside her window. “Affirmative. There are renewed threats of poison gas. You must get inside the structure to avoid further contamination.”

  “Oh, dear,” she replied, testing a long-buried sense of sarcasm.

  She sat there thinking for a few seconds, but quickly made up her mind about what had to be done. If the machine claimed to know about poison gas, she wasn’t going to argue with it.

  Rose grabbed Deogee’s leash and whispered in her ear. “Trust me, pup. I’m going to get you to safety.”

  She licked Rose’s cheek in return.

  Rose hesitated, recognizing the bond she’d made with the dog. “I love you, too.”

  She opened her door, which made the drone move aside. It warmed her heart when Deogee rose to follow, and they walked around the white box like it was barely worthy of their notice.

  “Two-minute warning. Help will arrive presently. Please return to central structure for rescue.”

  “I will,” she said in a pleasant voice.

  Rose led Deogee onto the walkway, which caused the dog to strain against the leash. As she expected, she didn’t want to go inside the convent again. Outside, there were no sirens or flashing lights approaching on the street. It was completely silent, save for the purr of fans from the machine …

  When she neared the entrance, the laser-pointer beam of light was clear and bright as it struck the wooden front door. She paused to study it. The dog acted like the light was going to burn her.

  “It’s bad, isn’t it?” she whispered. “That’s why you don’t want to touch it.” Behind her, the floating machine remained at the van, but the red light came out of its shell. To her eyes, it was as if the robot was pointing an angry, red finger at where it wanted her to go for punishment.

  Her heart rate went supernova as she realized she was going to willingly break another rule.

  “Lord, help me run.” She let go of the leash and jogged along the front of the convent, off the pathway and away from the door. “Run, dog!”

  Sister Rose hoped she wasn’t being silly, but all the pieces added up. Deogee’s reluctance to return to the convent. The machine’s odd insistence on going inside. The strange red light. A countdown. And the computer said it was poison gas. That was an outright lie. Gas didn’t steal away her fellow sisters; God raptured them.

  Deogee ran ahead but wouldn’t get too far in front of her. Her lungs burned from the short run, but they made it to the far end of the vineyard, at the edge of the tree line. The parable of Lot’s Wife came to mind as she reached the safety of the woods.

  “Do I look back?” she thought.

  She had to know if she’d been paranoid, so she glanced back to the convent. The white machine remained next to the SUV, which suggested maybe there was no threat, after all. However, as she stood next to a towering old oak tree, she noticed that the red light had moved. The pointer finger was on the tree, not two feet from her head.

  “What the—”

  Through the trees, an orange light caught her eye. A muted gray military airplane was high above.

  Now she understood fully what was going on.

  Panicked breath caught in her throat and she barely croaked out the words. “Run, dog!”

  She and Deogee took off into the woods and mad
e it a few paces, but the ground shook behind her, throwing her off balance. A white-hot light came from back at the oak tree, like a giant flash camera.

  Time seemed to slow, giving her an opportunity to consider her next move. She could drop to the ground behind a nearby tree and perhaps save herself. But she remembered her conversation with young Tabby. At the time, Rose disagreed with her idea it was a simple thing to die for your children.

  Now, she faced the same test. Was this God’s plan? Did he want to see if she would live up to his standards? Is this how she could join her sisters in Heaven?

  Her canine friend stood there confused at the turn of events. Maybe she wanted to make sure she got out of there; maybe the explosion made her freeze in fear.

  No matter the cause, she was able to jump on top of Deogee as the fire arrived.

  She would never know if she’d done the right thing.

  New York City, NY

  Ted and Emily kept close to the buildings as they walked the streets, ever mindful they might need to jump into an open shop or alleyway to hide. However, when they reached Times Square, he couldn’t resist walking in the open. Fifty-foot tall advertising video screens hung from buildings all along the popular tourist attraction. They remained lit and working, as if they didn’t get the message there were no people left to watch them.

  “I’ve never seen it close to empty,” Emily remarked.

  Clothing blew in the wind, and the canyon-like cross streets seemed to force mounds of pants and shirts into small drifts, like dunes in the desert. Shoes and heavier items remained where they fell however, giving a snapshot of how crowded the central square was at the time of the attack.

  They walked north, toward the most crowded portion of the open-air entertainment venue. Ads for perfume, smartphones, and movies flashed on the screens above them. The trees of Central Park, where she was taking him, beckoned from a few blocks away, leading him to glance over at Emily.

  “I’m fine,” she replied to his unasked question. “I could tell you were about to ask. My apartment isn’t far, but I figured this place was worth a shot. For many New Yorkers, this is the heart of the city, and for some, this is the heart of our entire culture. If there were survivors anywhere in the Big Apple, they would have come here.”