Escape From New York (14 page)

Screaming, Maureen went for the kitchen door. The floor cracked around her, rotted boards giving under her weight. She fell, gasping, right through the floor, disappearing waist down into the darkness below. Her face transfixed by fear, she scrabbled at the floor, clawing her way back up. Plissken moved toward her.

“Give me your hand!” he yelled, trying to break through the wall that her face had become. “Give me your hand!”

He was reaching, grasping for her.

The floor was giving way. Hands punching up, grabbing, ugly long-nailed charades of hands. They grabbed her, leaving slime trails on her clothes. Plissken began swiping at them with the rifle butt, but it was no use.

Screaming, Maureen disappeared down the hole, dragged down, leaving behind a long trail of scratches, grooves dug into the floor by her fingers. Hands still reaching. Screams turned to gurgles.

Sounds behind Plissken. He turned. A figure had pushed up through the floor to climb up. It stared at him with boring animal eyes, face unrecognizable through the crud that encased it. Long stringy hair dripped oozy globs, steam rose from the putrid body. In the hand—a long, gleaming ice pick.

CHOCK FULL O’ NUTS

17:29:55, :54. :53 . . .

Revulsion pushed through Plissken’s body, squeezed out by the survival instinct He clenched his teeth, aimed the rifle and began backing away.

Another sound. He turned quickly. Another crazy had come up behind him, through the hole that had swallowed Maureen. Then another.

Plissken moved without thought, bolted for open ground. He vaulted the counter, then charged past the big hole and into the kitchen. They were right behind him, hollering.

He got through the dark, gutted kitchen to a hallway beyond, racing at top speed. A door swung open at the hallway’s end and more crazies poured in; shadows against the darkness, bottling him up.

Turning on instinct, he smashed, shoulder first, through a door in the hallway. They were closing on him, foul breath on his neck, hands grabbing.

He was in a storeroom, charging through it. Faint light seeped through a glassless window at the far end. He ran to it and jumped through. There were more of them on the streets, drawn to the hunt.

The fire escape was set by the window, a rusted iron ladder jutting down. Swinging up the rungs, he started climbing.

The crazies were there, smelling blood, right behind him. They grabbed at his legs as he climbed, and he kicked viciously back at them.

Reaching the first landing, he dove through the window, shattering what glass was left in it. They were streaming up the ladder; they kept coming, always coming.

He grabbed an old dresser and shoved it in front of the window, then pushed the frame of a bed to block the room’s door, bracing it firmly under the knob.

No good. The dresser rocked in the gray-black darkness. The legs began jumping, scooting across the floor. A hand came around it, scratching at the wall, looking for a hold.

Bringing up the rifle, Plissken pulled the trigger, muzzle flare lighting the room crackling white. He fired two, three times, and the hand on the wall exploded in blood and fire.

The hand severed at the wrist, its own gore tacking it to the wall. Plissken’s eye got wide. On the fingers of the hand, just below the knuckles, were tattooed the letters: H-A-U-K. The hand began sliding down the wall.

With a loud, prolonged crack, the door splintered behind him. He turned. The dresser fell from the window with a crash. He jerked back. A crazy leapt through the place.

Plissken charged, bringing the rifle butt down hard on its head. The thing flopped to the floor, its body jumping like a grounded fish.

Another immediately filled the window space. The door fell completely behind him, bulging inward. It flew off the hinges, bed and wood scraping across the floor. Four of them filled the doorway.

They were all over him, coming through windows and doorway—hands, arms and drool-snarling faces. The smell was choking, suffocating. He swung out with the rifle, using it as a bludgeon. They screamed aviary sounds and grabbed at him. And the darkness closed all around him. And they
were
the darkness.

Through the trellis of arms he saw a doorway to his left. His arms were pinned, his gun. Finger on the trigger, he fired, time after time. They fell away from him, going down in pain. He broke away and went for the door. The bathroom. Getting through the door, he closed and locked it just as their pounding began on the other side. It was shaking, rattling with the force of their blows. It wouldn’t hold long.

There was no more time for Snake Plissken. In desperation, he turned to the tile wall, leveled his blood-caked rifle and emptied the clip, yelling in unison with the deafening rattle of the gun.

Wood and ceramic chips flew back at him, shrapnel and plaster dust filling the tiny room with white, powdery smoke. The banging continued on the door, locked in dreadful symphony with the exploding wall.

He ran the gun empty, and the dust settled. He had broken a hole through to the next apartment. He looked to the door; it was already beginning to splinter and crack.

“Son of a bitch.”

He jerked the clip and threw it down with the clutter on the floor, then pulled another from the holster and shoved it to the lock into the bite.

Turning, he raked the door with bright flashes, then jumped through the opening he had cut for himself. Running through the shell-shocked remnants in darkness of the next apartments, he jumped without hesitation through the still-glassed window of the place. It exploded on impact, and Plissken fell into darkness.

It was one floor to the ground, and he reached it at the same time the glass did. He came down hard, rolled and was on his feet and running, the gut panic cancelling any pains he may have sustained in the fall.

He was in the alley, rain puddled, glistening slick. A high brick wall filled his vision at the end of the street, another obstacle. He never broke stride.

The screams were behind him again. He pumped, the wall getting closer, looming larger. There was no stopping now. He came to it on a dead run and jumped, his arm grabbing for a hold at the top of the thing.

He got it, scrambled over and risked a look back. They filled the alley behind him, pouring out of the building, still coming. He started over, then his eye caught something lying on the ground where he had jumped.

It was his radio, smashed on the pavement below. It must have jarred loose when he went up the wall.

He jumped down the other side and was running again, feet splashing sprays of dirty water up his pant-leg. He ran a block, two. He looked over his shoulder. The crazies had climbed the wall and were scrabbling over, the energy of their madness matching his chemically induced vigor.

The mouth of the alley lay a half block ahead. He went for it, trying to keep his pace strong and even. Then he heard a sound, distant, but drifting closer. Music. It was music. An amplified twang, rattling the night.

There were words with the music, easing up. A brash voice, loud with anarchy.

“Got the time for . . .

gettin’ even.

Got the time for . . .

gettin’ even.”

Something slid up to block the alley. A car. No, a cab, a yellow cab. Plissken put on the brakes, skidding into the side of the vehicle. The music was coming up from inside.

“If I plot . . .

If I plan . . .

Like as not . . .

Sure I can.”

A head poked out the cab window, a big, ugly face with an obscene, grinning mouth. It was the man from the theater.

“Where you goin’, buddy?”

Plissken looked hard at the man, then back down the alley at the crazies who were a block away and closing fast. There was no time for thought, no time to determine whether or not he could trust the man.

He grabbed the handle and pulled it. The cab was battered. It looked like it had been dropped from a ten-story building, then hammered back in shape. The headlights were strapped on the fender. The windows, glass long-gone, were heavily barred. The faded yellow paint job was scarred by deep gouges and long, raking claw marks. Perfect. The Snake jumped in the back seat.

The cabbie turned to grin some more at him. “Bad neighborhood, Snake,” he said, and reaching beside him on the seat, picked up a peaked cap with a black bill and put it on his head.

Plissken turned to stare down the alley. The crazies were getting closer and closer.

“That’s what I’m for . . .

Proper time for . . .

get, get, get,

gettin’ even.”

“You don’t want to be out walking this neighborhood at night,” the cabbie said. “No sir.”

The man’s picture, faded and cracked past recognition, was stuck to the visor. There was a meter stuck to the dash, and clear bottles filled with amber liquid and rag-plugged tops sat beside the man in the front seat. Cocktails. And not martinis.

The crazies were half a block away, their screams nearly drowning out the music.

The cabbie lit a cigarette and took a deep, satisfied drag. “I’ve been a cabbie for thirty years and, let me tell you, you just don’t walk around here and live to tell the tale.” He shook his ugly head, frowning, for once, to make the point. “No sireebob. They’ll kill you and have you stripped to the bones in ten seconds flat. I’m usually not down here myself. I wanted to see that show.”

Plissken put a squeezing hand on the man’s shoulder. The crazies were nearly on top of them. “Let’s go,” he hissed.

The cabbie, smiling again, picked up one of the bottles off the seat. He touched his smoker to the rag plug. It burst into flames, licking the cab ceiling. He held the bottle out to Plissken, shaking it.

“This stuff’s gold around here, you know,” he said.

The crazies hit the car, on the run. Shaking, clawing, reaching. The cabbie casually tossed the bottle out the window and it exploded in their midst, flaring fire.

The front ranks went up in flames and the smell of burning flesh stood out even above their slime stench. The cabbie hit the gas pedal, and the car screeched away from the conflagration, swerving on down the street.

Plissken watched the orange fire disappear out the glassless rear window, then sank back gratefully in the seat. The aches and pains began to creep up his body the moment he relaxed. He took some more speed out of his pouch and ate it.

The cab was moving at top speed down the deserted streets, the driver taking obvious delight in being able to do things he could have never done when the city was a city. The buildings lay in ruins all around them, crumbled, decimated.

“When’d you get in, Snake?” he asked over his shoulder. “I didn’t know they caught you.”

He took a corner too fast, screeching around, back end fishtailing. Plissken fell over partway on the seat. He was already forgetting about the crazies and remembering how short his time on Planet Earth was going to be if he didn’t find the President.

The driver was still talking. “Snake Plissken in
my
cab,” he said proudly. “Wait’ll I tell Eddie.”

He turned around, grinning quickly. “Hold on, Snake!”

Turning the wheel hard, they swung into an alley, the cab going up on two wheels, nearly toppling. The cabbie was laughing, enjoying the hell out of himself. Plissken wondered if he would have been better off back with the crazies.

“Gotta take a shortcut to get out of here,” the man was saying. “You can run into real trouble on the streets.” He shook his head. “Night before a food drop, hell! Forget it.” He started laughing again. “Hey, Snake. Watch this!”

They sped through the alley, then took another hard right, throwing Plissken to the other side of the seat. His gratitude was slipping quickly away.

They tore through the empty streets, through the darkened towers of glass and stone.

“See her take that turn?” the cabbie asked, and his voice was high-pitched and excited, charged by his own mad adrenal glands. “Hell, I had this very cab before I got sent up. I locked her up before they walled us in. When they sent me back in, she started right up, like nothin’ changed.”

“And I’m tryin’ soft

And I’m tryin’ hard

Sneakin’ round to catch ’em

All off guard

Can I do it

anonymously?

Can I do it?

You just wait and see.”

“Three years,” he kept saying. “Three fuckin’ years, and she started right up. What a beauty.”

Plissken was through with it. He just didn’t have the time. “Hey,” he said.

The cabbie jumped, startled. It was almost as if he’d forgotten that Plissken was back there. “What were you doin’ back there. Snake?”

“Looking for somebody,” Plissken answered coldly.

“Shoulda asked me,” he said. “I know everybody in this town. Been driving this cab for thirty years. This very same cab. Did I tell you that she started right up. After three years, she . . .”

Plissken jammed his rifle into the back of the cabbie’s neck. “Now, just shut up for a minute!” he said angrily. “I’m gonna ask you a question, and you got one second to answer.” He took a deep, rasping breath. “Where’s the President?”

“The Duke’s got him,” the man answered matter of factly. “Hell, everybody knows that. Sure, the Duke’s got him. Gee, Snake, you don’t have to put a gun to my head. I’ll tell you.”

“Who’s the Duke?”

The man’s head turned sideways, eyebrows up in surprise. “The Duke of New York!” he said. “The big man. A-number-one, that’s who.”

“I want to meet this Duke.”

The cabbie started chuckling again. “You can’t meet the Duke. Are you crazy? Nobody gets to meet the Duke, he’s the big guy. You meet him once, then you’re dead.”

Plissken pushed the rifle barrel a little harder into the man’s neck. “How do I find him?”

The cabbie shrugged his hands off the wheel. “Well, I know a guy who might help you. He’s a little strange, though.” The man stopped talking long enough to take another drag on his cigarette. “Gee,” he said at last. “You didn’t have to use your piece on me. I woulda told you.”