Escape From Metro City

by Mandel, Richard

  "Radio telephone call, sir. It's the President."

  "I'll be right there," Ryan replied briskly, joining both his aide and the lieutenant as the three of them left the field headquarters tent in a hurry.

  At approximately the same time, in his personal office high atop a skyscraper in another city somewhere in the United States, Pandora CEO B. D. Nye sat at his desk pretending to read some routine reports from other of Pandora's many activities. They were the least of his concerns at that moment, and the look on his face betrayed him. It managed to combine both anger and frustration simultaneously. The call signal sounded on the intercom on his desk. Nye immediately dropped the papers on his desktop and pushed the respond button. "Yes?"

  "Mr. de Voormand to see you, sir."

  "Let him in," Nye said crossly.

  The door was opened by Nye's secretary, who waved de Voormand in. He stepped through the door, not waiting as she closed it behind him, but instead walking directly to Nye's desk. Nye made a point of carefully arranging the reports he had just set down, and then he gave his top aide a very cold look. "What happened?" he asked crisply. "What went wrong?"

  "I think you need to see this, sir," de Voormand said, pulling a Betamax® videotape out of one of his jacket pockets. "It's the video camera security footage from the closest fence camera we got of the ubermensch in action, right up until the point when we lost contact with it."

  "Lost contact?" Nye asked, arching his eyebrows.

  "Just a minute, sir," de Voormand said, as he went to a cabinet beside the front door, opened it and pulled out a rolling cart with both a large television and a Betamax VCR, then moved them to the nearest power outlet. "Once you see, you'll understand."

  Nye waited while de Voormand finished setting up, turned on both the TV and the VCR, inserted the tape, and started it playing. Only the drumming of the fingers on his desk betrayed his impatience. That stopped as soon as the videotape began to play. The remote feed from the fence security camera at the Pandora facility which had captured the action was grainy and in black-and-white only, with no sound, but it was enough. Both Nye and de Voormand watched with considerable interest. For de Voormand it was his second time, for Nye the first. When they came to the point in the fight after the ubermensch had flung Lisa into the truck, kicked Raul away, and then been confronted by Mercy, de Voormand paused the tape.

  "Interesting," Nye said, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands before him. "Do we know what she was saying?"

  "No, sir," de Voormand admitted. "The camera was too far away. Whatever it was, it made the ubermensch hesitate as you saw. That's when this happened." And with that he restarted the tape.

  Nye again watched with interest as the drama of the remainder of the fight unfolded before him. Once it was done, he nodded. "That's enough, I think."

  de Voormand stopped the tape and turned off both the TV and the VCR. He then looked back at his superior. Nye was looking rather thoughtful, but said nothing. After several seconds of this, de Voormand decided to risk an intrusion. "Sir?"

  Nye almost imperceptibly started. He looked up and over at de Voormand. "Yes?"

  "I have a theory, sir, if you want to hear it."

  Nye allowed himself to lean back in his chair. "Go ahead."

  "Sir, I think Ms. Parks identified herself as a Pandora employee. She would know that we've conditioned all of our programmable products not to cause deliberate harm to anyone who works with Pandora. Well, the ones that don't defy or break their conditioning, that is. Once she did that, it would have hesitated in order to check its own memory and find our implanted ones confirming her story. Whether it was true or not is beside the point. She made it hesitate, and that's when that soldier, Corporal Rappalo, was able to shoot and wound it."

  Nye smiled faintly. "I was thinking much along the same lines, Piter. Congratulations."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Nye slowly shook his head. "Bad girl, Ms. Parks. Very bad girl ... but we will deal with you in due time." He again looked up at de Voormand. "So why did it not return to the complex?"

  "Sir, all ubermensch are conditioned to adapt to changing circumstances. It apparently planned to lure Ms. Stanridge and her friends into our complex so they would be on its own field of combat, so to speak, which it knew better than they and thus would have the advantage. The fact that it was badly wounded before it could fully execute that plan changed the situation, so it adapted accordingly. That's why it left, sir."

  Nye let out a chuckle. "So it was logical for it to run away, eh?"

  "Not run away, sir. It's going into Metro City. I'm willing to lay odds that it's after the heavy weapons left by that Army convoy when the zombies wiped it out earlier. Once it has its selection of those, then the odds will be in its favor again and it will return to finish the job."

  "Assuming the Army doesn't get in there first," Nye said with a smile.

  de Voormand shrugged his shoulders. "If they do, sir, they're going to get to experience the power of an ubermensch firsthand, instead of watching old films and reading reports. Plus, if we're really lucky, it'll find Ms. Stanridge first."

  "If," Nye repeated. He let out a little laugh. "That's a mighty big word, Piter, as the saying goes."

  "Yes, sir," de Voormand responded.

  Nye thought some more before speaking again. "I presume it would be logical to assume that the ubermensch may no longer be under our control and might significantly deviate from its programmed orders, given the damage it took."

  de Voormand gulped. "I would say that's a safe presumption, sir."

  "Safe?" Nye said, giving him a look. "Not for anyone in its path."

  "No, sir," de Voormand said nervously.

  "And that includes Ms. Stanridge."

  de Voormand looked even more nervous. "Yes, sir," he said meekly.

  Nye sighed. "Well, so much for that operation, and for being able to convincingly market our version of the truth."

  de Voormand did not respond. Instead, he looked to the floor, while a single bead of sweat formed on his right temple and began to run down that side of his face.

  Nye got up from his seat and walked over to look out the wide picture window at the back of his office. It offered a beautiful nighttime view of the nearby neighboring skyscrapers, and the lights of the city below stretching off into the distance. "I suppose I'd better leave the country while I still can," he said calmly.

  "Yes, sir," de Voormand said, looking up at him. "I've already made the necessary arrangements, sir."

  Nye's head turned just enough to see his chief assistant from out of the corner of one eye. "You have?"

  "Yes, sir. That's part of my job, sir. Anticipating what you might need at any given moment in time."

  Nye now turned to look at de Voormand face-to-face. The two stood there for a while like that, saying nothing, just looking at each other. Eventually Nye stirred, walked forward, and then offered his hand to de Voormand, who took it. Nye smiled at him. It was the warm smile Nye reserved for friends and trusted subordinates, and not the ice-cold smile he usually gave everyone else. "Thank you, Piter. It's too bad it came to this, and I would hate to lose you. You've been an excellent right-hand man. Do your best to deal with this while I'm away, and try to manage to come back to me on the other end if you can."

  "Yes, sir. I'll do my best, sir."

  "Good." With that the two shook hands. Once they were done, Nye let go and walked past de Voormand and headed for the office door. de Voormand turned to watch him go. Nye stopped as he opened the door, and held up a hand with the forefinger raised. "One more thing."

  "Yes sir?"

  "I want you to investigate Ms. Stanridge's living relatives, as well as the family tree of anyone who went on that mission in World War II which retrieved the untotenvirus. We may need a fallback plan."

  "Yes, sir."

  Nye went through the door. de Voormand heard him talking to his secretary. "June, I'll be out for a while. Mr. de Voormand wil
l take care of things while I'm gone." There was more, but by then the door had closed behind him. Back in the office, de Voormand breathed a sigh of relief.

  "Yes, Mr. President," General Ryan said respectfully into the phone. "That's my plan, sir. If that thing's going to prevent them from getting out, then we've got to go in to get them."

  "How are you going to avoid a repeat of what happened with the relief convoy yesterday?" asked a kindly older voice familiar to everyone from his many appearances in public and on media.

  "We're going to be a lot better armed than they were, sir," Ryan replied. "The best they had were 50-caliber machine guns. I plan on going in with flamethrowers and flamethrowing vehicles, sir."

  "And the ubermensch?"

  "We'll have regular tanks along with both rocket-propelled grenades and shoulder fired missiles to deal with that, sir, and I'm also requisitioning more helicopter gunships. That thing screwed us over the first time because we didn't know it was there. It's not going to screw us over again, sir, now that we do."

  "I see." There was a pause. "General, I know you've probably been asked this before, but I'm going to ask again. Is there any hope for any of those other poor folks besides those four?"

  "No, sir," Ryan said firmly. "None at all. Once you've been infected beyond a certain point, and everybody in Metro City save those four are well beyond it now, then there's no saving them."

  There was another pause on the line. "Well, I can tell you're doing the best you can given the circumstances. You get those four out of there. Do whatever you have to do, General, but do your best to save them, no matter what it takes. Nancy and I will be praying for you and your men."

  "Yes, sir," Ryan respectfully replied.

  "Good luck, General Ryan. Goodbye."

  The line clicked, then began to buzz. Ryan handed the receiver back to the radio telephone operator, who hung it up. The general then looked around at his men. Those in the radio tent were looking back at him, a few more had their heads stuck through the flap, and even more were standing outside waiting for orders. "All right," he said confidently. "The President and the people are counting on us to pull this rescue off. Let's do it."

  "Sir," Ryan's aide said.

  "Yes?" Ryan said, looking at him.

  The man was beaming. "Those special packages you ordered have just arrived."

  Ryan grinned. "Well, all right then!" He waved to everyone. "To your posts, men! We've got some civvies to rescue!

  A chorus of yes sirs! sounded from both inside and out, after which both Ryan and his men immediately scurried to do their jobs.

  One second Lisa felt incredible pain pass through her entire body. It was the worst in her left side, left arm, left knee and left eye as her body slammed into the windshield and upper part of the front end of the overturned rig tractor. The next second she felt no pain whatsoever. In fact, she felt nothing at all. Instead, she found herself adrift and weightless in an inky black void. She could see herself, and to her shock she discovered that all of her clothes were gone, but she didn't understand how this could have happened. She also didn't understand why she could see herself, given the total darkness surrounding her. Most people would have panicked given the situation in which she found herself, but not Lisa. She then realized that she was no longer in the world she knew. She was somewhere in the spirit realm. That meant ... oh, no. No, no, a thousand times NO! She had so much of life left to live. Surely it wasn't her time! Immediately Lisa closed her eyes, shutting out the void that was trying to claim her, and focused on calming herself. Once that was done, she began to will herself to live with every fiber of her existence. At once she felt her body begin to move upward. A light began to grow somewhere above her, which became bright enough that she could detect it even through her closed eyelids, but she remained focused on willing herself to live. She continued to rise faster and faster, the light becoming ever brighter around her, until it was so bright that she could almost feel it. Suddenly it was gone, and she found herself once again standing on her feet. She could also sense that she was wearing clothes once more, although they weren't the same she had been wearing before. Something had obviously changed, but for good or for ill she could not tell the way she was. She decided to risk it, and opened her eyes.

  Lisa Stanridge found herself standing on a vast empty plain under a dark twilight sky. There was no sign of the others, of the highway and its vehicles, of the ubermensch, of the Pandora facility, of Metro City, or of the surrounding landscape that she knew. It was just her and that empty plain, with mountains both dark and ominous-looking in the distance in all directions. She could also see that she was no longer nude, nor was she dressed in her racing firesuit and tall racing boots. She was attired instead in traditional pre-colonial Cherokee garb and matching moccasins for women. My father's people, she thought to herself. Does this have something to do with him? But no, it can't. He's not here. He's ... I don't know, she admitted to herself. I don't know what's happened to him, or to Mom. She looked around, taking in everything she could see, and another unpleasant thought flashed in her mind. I didn't succeed. Maybe I'm dead after all.

  At that moment something flew past the right part of her upper body with such speed and force that it almost knocked Lisa off of her feet. She stumbled, then came back around in a street fighter's crouch even as the thing came into view in front of her. It was a giant raven, and it was on fire. It flew ahead and up, emitting an extremely loud and piercing cry that hurt Lisa's ears, and she had to fight the urge to clamp her hands over them. Despite her predicament, she at once recognized that particular flaming bird. "Kalona Ayeliski!" Lisa cried aloud.

  The giant flaming raven slowed and wheeled about sharply at Lisa's cry. It hovered in mid-air for a moment before her, then came down and alighted but a few paces away. It cocked its head and looked at her strangely, and then there was a sudden flash of light and shifting of form. Before Lisa's eyes the burning bird morphed into the image of a young native American woman dressed the same as she was, in pre-colonial Cherokee clothing. There were significant differences, however. The newcomer's skin was not ruddy like Lisa's, but as pale as moonshine. Her clothing had shamanistic trappings, and she had a headdress made from raven feathers. Her lips were blood red, and so were her fingernails, which were at least two inches long and tapered to sharp points. Finally, the newcomer's eyes were not those of a human. They were those of the raven, and one could almost imagine black fire dancing within those jet black orbs. The newcomer stood there for a moment, eyeing Lisa up and down, and then spoke. When she did her voice had a husky tone, yet with just enough of an echo effect to suggest power scarcely veiled. "So ..." the figure said, "... you know my name. From your father, no doubt."

  "Yes," Lisa said, drawing herself up before a member of one the most feared groups of Cherokee spirits: the ones they called the Raven Mockers, who preyed on the dying and ate the hearts of the dead. "My father schooled me well in the old ways of his people. I know who you are, witch."

  "Then you know why you can see me, and hear both my words and my cry," the figure responded.

  "Yes," Lisa said. "I know. My body hovers on the edge between life and death. That's why."

  "And were I to strike," said the figure, lifting a hand as she did, "I could have your soul this instant." There was a splurting sound as the tips of the fingers of the woman's uplifted hand exploded in blood and shattered skin, and five very long razor sharp claws extended to their fullest length.

  Lisa held her ground, although it took an effort. "Yes, you could," she admitted. A thought crossed her mind, and she voiced it. "Then why don't you?"

  The figure laughed. "Because it is not your time, girl." The claws were suddenly retracted, and once again the figure's hand was whole. "If it were, I wouldn't waste time talking to you. I would swallow your soul and be done with it." She laughed again. "And yours is such a sweet and tasty soul too." She began to lean towards Lisa. Lisa in turn stepped back. There was a loud rumble of thun
der in the sky, and the figure looked up. It was the only time Lisa ever saw the Raven Mocker with fear in her eyes. After the thunder ended, the figure leaned back and resumed her previous pose. "It is no matter," she said. "My sisters and I have been enjoying quite the feast in the ruins of the white man's town from where you came."

  "You have?" Lisa said. It was more statement than question.

  "Yes." The figure now gave a soft laugh. "It beats the regular routine. We've gotten tired of playing six-hand canasta with Apollo and Aphrodite and the others over at Odin's. The Rabbit and Loki always try to cheat." She laughed again. "No, this event you humans have caused, it is such a delight to our kind. Ahhh, to feast again as in the days of old!" With that she gave a satisfied sigh.

  "Apollo and Aphrodite?" Lisa said. "Odin and Loki? Those are legends and myths."

  The figure looked sternly at her. "Are you calling me a myth, girl?"

  Lisa shook her head. "Not with you standing in front of me. I can't deny the reality of that."

  The figure smiled thinly. "Then know this human. We gods and spirits are real. Very real. All of us." "If so, then why did you leave?'

  The figure laughed. It was an evil laugh that chilled to the bone. "Leave? We didn't leave your kind, girl. Your kind left us, long ago. Nevertheless we are still here, and we still occasionally intervene when the situation calls for it. Such as right now, for instance. That is why I am here with you, instead of feasting with my sisters and our familiars."

  Lisa's eyes narrowed. "Why is that, witch?" she asked.

  "Because for you I am serving as the messenger of Unhlahnauhi, he who the white men call the Great Spirit. I am to inform you that now is not your time. That path that your life is to follow does not lead to me. Not this path, anyway." With that the figure laughed again.

  "I don't understand," Lisa said.

  The figure stopped laughing and looked at her darkly. Her eyes seemed to glow with black fire as she spoke. "You will be returned to the land of the living, but your life will not be as you wanted it to be. That is inevitable, given what has happened to you. Even so, yours is a soul that Unhlahnauhi deems worthy of returning, for he sees great things ahead for you. That is, if you stay on the new path that is laid before your feet."