Empty Cities

by E. E. Isherwood

“I’m behind you!” he said as he stopped to line up another attacker. However, he came up empty. There weren’t any targets to shoot along the sidewalk because the enemy soldiers were all in the traffic. However, if he couldn’t see them, maybe they couldn’t see him back.

  They hustled into the stairwell for the subway station, then went into the depths.

  He let her go down first but stayed on her heels. He didn’t think anyone saw them go in, but he had to assume they would follow them eventually.

  Emily ran to the edge of the platform, and Ted noticed her whole body shaking.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said to instill confidence.

  “They’re trying to kill us,” she replied with dismay.

  “We’re going to kill them first. If you see anyone—anyone—you shoot right away, you understand?”

  She drew in a breath. He heard the fear in her lungs. “I’m trying, Ted. I didn’t expect to be a nervous wreck when the shooting started.”

  He laughed, guiding her off the platform. “You should have seen me back in Iraq. I was at ten-thousand feet when I avoided my first surface-to-air missile. Nearly peed my pants.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  They stood next to a tiled wall that had the same bathroom feel as the Lincoln tunnel. Ted pointed down the tunnel in both directions. “Which way will take us to Central Park? That way, right?”

  “Yes, but don’t we want to go the other way?”

  “No. I made a mistake, Emily. They’ve been waiting for high value targets. Probably have a presence in lots of buildings around here. They’ll all be coming down to help their friends. Our only chance is to do the unexpected.”

  She started off in the direction of the park. “Like going north when every logical reason says we would go south.”

  He ran to catch up. “Bingo bango bongo, ma’am.” For a second, he expected her to complain about using that word, but she was occupied.

  Ted glanced back to the stairwell at the end of the platform but didn’t see the shadows of approaching men. If they ran like hell, they might get far enough into the tunnel that no one would see them. Although it was very dark, there was enough light to see movement far down the tube. He wouldn’t assume they were safe until they reached the next station.

  They’d gone about a hundred feet before he tripped over a bundle of wires hidden in the shadows.

  “Ow,” he spit out.

  They were going to die if he kept making mistakes.

  St. Louis, MO

  Tabby and the kids made it to the car in the alleyway, but the sound of gunfire continued back at the TV station, in short bursts now. Either Gus and Vinny were still alive and fighting, or the robot horse kept blasting the place to bring it crumbling down.

  “Get us out of here!” Audrey screamed.

  “I want to go home,” Donovan complained.

  “We’re going,” she replied. Her reliable car started right up, but she shut out all the commotion to quell her flaring panic. She lifted her hands from the wheel; they shook like it was ten degrees outside.

  “Drive!” Peter shouted.

  She intended to think of where to go next, but there wasn’t much hope of figuring that out. There were probably those mechanical drones everywhere now because of the shooting at the station. Additionally, she didn’t really know the city well enough to plan a route.

  Tabby put it in reverse and sped down the alley until she reached the intersecting road. She’d followed Gus’s MSD truck into the narrow alley from close to the Arch, so now she was going to return on part of that route.

  Once the car was in gear and moving forward, the complaining got even worse.

  “We can’t go back!” Audrey screamed. She pointed at the Arch, which loomed huge out the front windshield.

  “I’m not,” she replied. Tabby shoved the wheel to the right and the car sped around a corner and onto a two-lane street. A few wrecked cars blocked part of the route, but she made it around those without scraping them.

  At the next intersection, she turned left.

  “I’m going south. We saw a bridge over the river. We have to get to Illinois.”

  Donovan hugged his shotgun in the front seat, but he drifted back and forth because he didn’t buckle in.

  “Geeze,” she said, reaching around him. “Peter, get his seatbelt.”

  She had to one-hand the wheel around another truck parked on the center stripe of the road, but then she glanced back to the otherwise reliable one of their group. Now he sulked as he watched out his window.

  “Dammit! Peter!” she yelled.

  He turned to her. “What?”

  “His belt. I need his belt.” She pointed to Donovan’s seatbelt next to the boy’s head.

  Peter huffed in protest, but he reached forward and grabbed it, then stretched it so she could get a grip on it. With one hard pull, she got it extended enough she could safely strap in the boy. He was falling apart even as she watched.

  “Thank you,” she said with relief.

  Peter went back to brooding.

  “And don’t worry about losing your gun. No one could have seen that coming.”

  Peter almost looked her way, but then redoubled his efforts to glare outside.

  “I saw one!” Audrey’s voice was hoarse.

  “What was it?” she asked as they approached another intersection. “And where was it?”

  Audrey tapped her window. “It was that way. A floaty one.”

  Tabby wasn’t stopping for anything. All doubts about the motivation of those workers under the Arch went away when bullets chugged out of the machine gun. They had to get out of the city before they were caught.

  “And another!” Audrey said in a panicked voice.

  “Sheesh,” Tabby growled. “Hold on again.” She turned the car down a side street opposite of where Audrey saw the drones. Then, she saw a familiar blue sign.

  “The interstate!” She drove as fast as she dared for a couple of blocks, then braked hard to make a left turn for the on-ramp to the highway. Once she had it pointed in the right direction, she punched the gas and went up the ramp.

  The highway going east was on a raised deck, but the lanes going in the opposite direction were on a second level above them. Without trying, she’d found a way to hide from anyone who might be above them. However, after half a mile, the highway bent to the right, and out from under its peer. The highway went into a complicated series of on and off ramps, but she kept going toward a wide bridge over the Mississippi River.

  “They are going to see us,” Peter lectured her.

  As he’d noted, being on the bridge would put them in full view of everyone at the Arch, which was coming up on their left. As soon as they passed a huge round tower named Riverside Hotel, the silver monument came into full view, though she couldn’t see the grassy turf at the base.

  “I’m going to stay on this side.” She drove into the right shoulder of the ten-lane bridge, which made it hard to see the bottom half of the Arch.

  Peter became more animated. “You did it, Tabby. I don’t see them. They can’t see us.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled for those floating drones. They could send one up here to check if we went this way.” She had no idea what she was going to do if a drone chased her. They seemed to act like hunting dogs, who called in the real killer once they’d found prey.

  Tabby maintained a painful grip on the steering wheel until they got all the way across the river. The lanes going back to the city were fairly cramped with abandoned cars, but only a few were going her way, so she didn’t have any problem maintaining this speed.

  As the highway went through some old factories and dilapidated buildings, she unleashed the scream she’d been suppressing.

  “We made it!”

  CHAPTER 24

  New York City, NY

  Ted’s eyes adjusted to the dim tunnel after a few minutes, but it got a little brighter when they arrived at an underground junction. The su
bway track they’d followed since the 57th Street station kept going straight, but another line passed over a metal truss about fifteen feet above.

  “Do you know which one of these lines goes to Central Park?”

  “The one we’re on gets close, but, if I’m guessing correctly, this other one is pointed to the station at the edge of the park. I think that’s where we should go.”

  He took her word for it. She lived within walking distance of the subway, so her guess had to be better than his.

  Men shouted far behind, though they’d gone deep enough into the dark tunnel that they no longer saw the station. They at least had that going for them. He pointed her up a nearby ladder. “After you, Madam President.”

  She hopped up but hissed at him. “I order you to stop calling me that.”

  He grabbed the rung the second her foot left it. He didn’t look up as he climbed. “I won’t call you that, Madam President.”

  Ted snickered like a schoolboy. The stress made him lower his inhibitions just enough to make him goofy.

  She reached the next level and climbed inside the cross tunnel.

  “I see the station, Ted. We’re almost there.”

  When he got most of the way up, he glanced at her standing above. She held out a hand to help him, which he accepted. “We stick together, funny guy,” she said in a businesslike manner, as if she knew, despite his sense of humor, he might tell her to run ahead while he held off the pursuit.

  “Yeah, sure. Let’s get over there.”

  They ran through the dark tunnel for a hundred yards until emerging inside another subway station. It had the same large white tiles, but the long platform was bracketed with a dozen large movie posters, like they’d come out in a movie theater ticket booth.

  “Yep, this is where I thought we were.” She pointed to the subway platform number. “If we go up top, we’ll be right at the edge of the trees. We should be able to sneak into the park without being seen. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  “The last place they’ll look,” he agreed.

  They hopped over piles of clothes and went up a few flights of stairs. As promised, they came out in front of a wall of trees. Wrecked cars and lots of lost clothing filled the street along the edge of the parkland.

  He also recognized the statue of the man on a horse he’d seen from up in her apartment. The metallic monument was out in the open, so he pointed toward the trees. “Over there. Hustle!”

  Emily did her best, but she was obviously tired now. He’d been running her pretty hard since they ran from the Hellfire missile up on the roof. If they could get to a nice clump of bushes, they could risk a short break.

  They’d barely made it onto the grass and beneath some trees when he saw movement.

  “Down!” he dove behind a black metal fence lined with bushes. She collapsed next to him.

  “There are already people here! They might be who the Seahawk was trying to find.” The Navy helicopter was at least a mile away, on the north side of the park, which he found amazing given how crowded the skies had become with drones. The whirring of Predators came from at least two directions now. He and Emily were in danger of being spotted and killed if they stuck around.

  He craned his neck over the fence and caught sight of fatigues across one of the nearby fields. Picnic baskets and quilts dotted the quaint landscape where New Yorkers came to relax, though no people were there. That stillness made it easier to see the two figures moving on the far side.

  Ted raised his scoped rifle, ready to shoot if necessary, to see who they were.

  “Marines,” he remarked, “though one of them is wearing jeans, like a civilian.”

  “Maybe they’re imposters,” she replied. Emily sat with her back against the fence.

  He spent thirty seconds trying to see what they were doing, but they were too far away to see any detail. However, they were small in frame and he soon figured out both were women. It didn’t bother him, but it did seem highly unusual that two women Marines would be alone in the park like this.

  “What are you doing?” he quietly asked the Marines.

  The whomping of rotor blades alerted him to a new possibility. The pair was hiding in thick foliage exactly as he and Emily were doing. They kept looking back toward the building where the black vans were parked. And, perhaps most significantly, they were next to a large field where a helo might be able to touch down.

  “That’s our way out,” he said with determination.

  Amarillo, TX

  In the first two seconds of the gunfight, Brent witnessed Curtis get a hole drilled in his skull, and he watched helplessly as the dead man’s shotgun roared. It had been pointed slightly to Brent’s right, so the slug went somewhere else. He didn’t care, as long as it wasn’t at him.

  Brent then moved on instinct alone. He dove and pushed Trish under the little kitchen table as both sides of the dispute opened fire. Because they’d all been packed into the narrow trailer, there wasn’t much they could do to find cover.

  “Stop!” he yelled into the hailstorm of thunder and bullets.

  Men screamed. Cursed. Crouched behind furniture or tried to retreat deeper into the trailer. A couple of Curtis’s guys crumpled to the floor, though one of his men in the orange jumpsuits howled in the family room.

  Trish held her ears and screamed. He understood why. She was young and at home. The sudden violence ripped her out of that fantasy faster than she could handle.

  “You’re fine!” he pleaded.

  Brent caught sight of Paul, incredulous that he was still on his feet.

  “Get down!”

  The long-haired man appeared shell-shocked after accidentally shooting the other guy.

  Paul glanced down, and his eyes flashed recognition at Brent’s words, but a pair of holes opened up in his chest. He fell back at the force of being double-tapped.

  Brent suffered a flashback to Vietnam as he watched the kitchen floor fill up with bodies and blood. It was something he never dreamed he’d see on home soil, and certainly not while he cowered under a table. Though he didn’t have a weapon, the carnage spurred him to action.

  First, he tipped over the table, angling the top toward the men who had tried to harm Trish. Then he grabbed her wrist to get her attention. “We have to move!”

  She’d been struck by the men; red bruises flared up on her cheeks. He understood, but she needed to get out of there or they’d both end up dead.

  A chunk of table exploded next to his head. Because it was a round surface, their feet gave them away as still being behind it.

  He looked at his men, hopeful one of them would lay down suppressive fire for him, but none of them were focused on him or Trish. They fired blindly into the kitchen, which only served as evidence he needed to risk an escape.

  “Behind me!” he crawled toward the living room.

  The bones in his knees rubbed together like daggers under the skin. He hadn’t needed to move this fast since the 1990s, and two days ago, he would have thought it was impossible.

  Trish stuck with him, though he had no idea how she was able to see through her tears. The closer they got to his men, the more she cried out. Perhaps because the intense fire of the shotgun barrels was only a foot or two over their heads.

  A man screamed in agony from the kitchen.

  Another man fell against the oven. Pots and pans tumbled to the floor.

  Someone shot out the fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling panels, and they exploded all over the kitchen floor. It seemed like an eternity while all this took place, but Brent and Trish made it behind the sofa after a short crawl of less than twenty feet.

  His old heart chugged at maximum speed, causing his breathing to get difficult to control. “Oh, God. We made it.”

  Trish glanced up at him but said nothing.

  The shotgun bursts continued for another ten or fifteen seconds, then they all stopped as if given a signal. None of Curtis’s guys fired back.

  “Brent!” a m
an’s voice echoed from far away.

  He looked up.

  “Brent. Boss man! You made it.” It was a man named Carter.

  “We did?” He sat there for a minute gathering his wits. One more shotgun blast interrupted the calm, then…nothing.

  He got up when his five remaining guys stood in the living room without fear of being shot in return. A couple went into the kitchen, but another guy helped him and Trish to their feet.

  “You’re lucky, pops, we were ready for anything. You almost bought the farm.”

  He wondered if all the shooting had been necessary. Did the others even know it was started by a damned broom handle? Did it matter?

  A man called out from the kitchen. “We got them all. Mission accomplished.”

  One of his people plopped down on the couch. “Thank God. That was some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. We almost fucking died!”

  Other men joined him, and a small celebration broke out.

  Brent looked into the kitchen only once to confirm the others were dead. Several of the escaped men had fallen to the floor there, though a couple of the others were cut down in the hallway.

  Paul was the only allied fatality. Two men had grazes but were otherwise fine.

  One of the guys handed him a shotgun. “Here you go, Pops. Sorry we ever took it away from you.”

  “No, you did the right thing.” He wasn’t certain of the truth of his own statement, but he figured he would have been dead a lot sooner if he’d gone in with his attitude and a shotgun. Their attack on Trish had made him a bit crazy.

  All the death tempered that attitude.

  “Let’s get back home, boys. Get you patched up. And we’re taking Trish back, too. From now on, she’s under our protection. Got it?”

  The five men nodded.

  The trial by fire was over.

  CHAPTER 25

  New York City, NY

  The Seahawk helicopter flew by, almost on its side as it swooped away from the impact of the missile strike. Kyla wiped away a sheet of sweat from her forehead and expected all hope of rescue was gone, but Meechum pulled out the handheld radio.

  “Longbow, this is Pocahontas. We are close to the designated LZ. How copy? Over?”