Terminus (31 page)

They sat cross-legged on the floor. Lupe turned the heavy transmitter in her hands. She examined the scorched and dented case. Foliage paint burned away, exposing base metal beneath.

She unthreaded screws with a Leatherman. She jammed the knife in the case seam and shucked open the lid.

A mess of cooked components.

‘Jeez,’ said Lupe. ‘Look at it. This thing is toast. Split circuit board. Bunch of wires melted through.’

‘But it’s old army gear, right?’ said Donahue. ‘Built for field repair. All we got to do is splice the wires, match colour-to-colour.’

‘Forget it. It’s totalled. Screwed beyond redemption.’

‘We’ve got serious problems without it.’

‘Want me to wave a wand? Expelliarmus? Believe your own eyes. It’s trashed.’

Donahue stood and paced. She unhooked a Motorola from her belt.

‘We’ve still got handsets. Ridgeway is beyond reach, but we should be able to talk to the chopper once it’s within range.’

‘What kind of range?’ asked Lupe.

‘A mile. Maybe two.’

‘If we don’t respond to long-range radio transmissions, Ridgeway will assume we are dead. They only have one chopper. They won’t risk losing it.’

‘They have their orders,’ said Donahue. ‘The Chief is a chain-of-command kind of guy. NORAD told him to retrieve Ekks. He’ll commit all his resources to get the job done.’

Lupe shook her head.

‘We need a plan B. I don’t trust people who hide behind uniforms. Never have, never will.’

‘The Chief will be here soon,’ said Donahue. ‘Six hours. Maybe less. Best thing we can do is sit tight and stay alive.’

‘Suppose those six hours come and go?’ asked Lupe. ‘What then? I’m heading out at sunrise. I’m going to hit the streets and head for the shore. You should come with me.’

‘There’s no way across the river.’

‘I’ll build a raft, if that’s what it takes. Couple of oil drums lashed with rope. Plank for a paddle. About a half mile of water to the Brooklyn shore. I could make it on my own, but it would be easier with your help.’

‘The Chief will come. He won’t abandon us.’

Lupe shook her head.

‘People are people. Scared, stupid, selfish. You know who I trust in this situation? Me. That’s who.’

‘You’re wrong. He’ll come. He won’t leave us behind.’

Tombes kept guard. He sat cross-legged on the floor, axe in his lap, gaze fixed on boxes and tins stacked against the air con grille. He was tensed for the slightest movement: the gentle rasp of crates beginning to shift, the clink of paint tins pushed together. Any sign Galloway was nudging boxes aside in a sly attempt to reach fresh meat.

His head began to nod. Tombes shook himself awake and rubbed his eyes. He got to his feet and paced. He blew his hands and tried to get warm.

Sicknote snored. Mouth open, head thrown back. Each exhalation dwindled to a wheezing chest rattle. He coughed to clear his throat, then spluttered awake as a gulp of vomit splashed down his red state-issue smock.

‘Christ,’ muttered Tombes.

He picked up the ragged shreds of Galloway’s pants. He searched pockets and retrieved cuff keys. He tossed the keys to Sicknote.

‘Mop that shit up.’

Sicknote unlocked his shackles. He rubbed his wrists. He pulled the smock over his head. Big belly, thick chest hair. He knelt and sopped a splash of steaming vomit from the floor.

‘There’s a pile of junk in the hall,’ said Tombes. ‘Take a look. Most of it got fried, but you might find fresh clothes if you dig around.’

The hall was bathed in a steady torrent of chill air from the street entrance. The tiled floor was coated in a treacherous ice-sheen. Roof-rubble glittered as if split bedrock had exposed a mineral seam.

Sicknote stepped over trashed equipment. Melted nylon bags. A steel dive helmet burned black. Plastic hypodermics melted to viscous tar.

He sifted debris. He found a Tunnel Rat shirt. He held it up. Lower half burned away. He threw it aside.

Boot steps. Lupe and Donahue descended the street exit stairs carrying a body wrapped in foil insulation blankets.

‘Hold on,’ said Donahue. ‘Got to rest my arms.’

They lowered the body to the floor. They blew their hands and flexed cold fingers.

They saw Sicknote.

‘Thought we had you on a leash,’ said Donahue.

Sicknote stood over the corpse.

He lifted the edge of the blanket with his foot. A hand seared to a carbonised claw. He lifted the blanket a little further. Melted sleeve fabric. A trace of red: the remnants of a state-issue smock.

‘Damn. Is that Wade?’

‘The bits they didn’t eat.’

‘Poor, poor bastard.’

Lupe glanced at Sicknote’s naked belly.

‘Aren’t you cold? You’re turning blue.’

He shrugged.

‘We got to get you covered up. You’ll freeze to death.’

A couple of holdalls had survived the fire. Lupe unzipped and shook out the bags. Bundled clothes. A fire hat rolled across the floor.

She dressed Sicknote in bunker pants and an FDNY sweatshirt.

‘Few burn holes, but it’ll trap a little heat.’

‘What will you do with Wade?’ he asked, as he buttoned pants.

‘Put him in the office. We threw the other bodies into the tunnel water, but Wade deserves a little better. Don’t want to treat the guy like refuse.’

‘How about me? Am I worth a prayer? Or would you toss me like garbage?’

‘Yeah. If it comes down to it, I’ll say a few words.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Same goes for me, all right?’ said Lupe. ‘Don’t leave me down here. If anything happens, put me out in the street. I wouldn’t want this place to be my grave.’

Sicknote hitched thick yellow braces.

‘One nut house to another, my whole life. Drawstrings and elastic. Baby clothes. Can’t remember the last time I wore anything with buttons and buckles.’

He pulled on socks and boots. He wrestled into a heavy fire coat and turned up the cuffs. He fastened jacket clasps. He picked up the fire helmet, brushed ash from the brim and set it on his head.

‘Must be nice to have a uniform. Actually do something in the world.’

He found a Maglite in the coat pocket. He tested the beam.

‘Well. See you around.’

He gave Lupe a mock salute. He headed for the street exit and began to climb the steps.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ called Lupe from the foot of the stairwell.

Sicknote paused and caught his breath. He leaned against the wall.

He contemplated the entrance gate above him. A night wind stirred the ripped polythene curtain. Snowflakes drifted through the lattice bars.

‘I’m insane. Most madmen, the lucky ones, don’t know they are nuts. But I guess that’s my curse. I’m batshit, and I know it. There’s a real world, a normal world, beyond the voices, beyond the visions, but it’s out of reach.’ He turned and looked at Lupe. He tapped his fire helmet. ‘Truth is, I’m tired. Bone tired. I just want it all to stop.’

He wearily climbed the steps and stood in front of the gate.

‘Say that prayer for me. Say it when I’m gone.’

He pulled back the curtain and relished the chill wind that caressed his face.

A cold, white hell. Rubble and wreckage furred with ice.

He pushed a hand through the bars. Snowflakes settled on his palm. He watched them liquefy. A lethal beauty. Exquisite feathered crystals tainted with fallout.

Lupe watched him from the foot of the stairwell.

‘Where will you go?’

He shrugged.

‘I’ll take a walk up Fifth. See how far I get. What do you think the Empire State looks like right now? New York in ruins. You got to be curious. It must be a hell of a sight.’

He took the cuff key from his pocket. He unlocked the gate. He hauled back the lattice. Harsh rust-shriek. He stood in the entrance archway, polished the remaining lens of his spectacles on the sleeve of his fire coat, then looked around.

Spectral silence.

Cotton candy flakes settled on rubble and broken bodies. He shone his flashlight upwards. A vertiginous plane of scorched brick and fire ladders stretching high into the night.

He shivered and turned up his collar.

‘Wait,’ called Lupe. ‘Hold on.’

Sicknote turned around.

‘Don’t go out there.’

He stared at her.

She held out her hand.

‘Come down here. I’ll look after you.’

Sicknote hesitated.

‘Please. Come on down.’

He pulled the gate closed and descended the steps to the ticket hall.

‘There’s been too much death,’ said Lupe. ‘Someone’s got to survive this shitstorm. For my sake. Stay.’

Tombes carried a chair from the office to the plant room. He swung it over his head and smashed it on the concrete floor. He jammed wood into the rusted fire bucket. Scrunched paper for kindling. He snapped open his Zippo and sparked a fire.

They stood round the bucket and warmed their hands.

‘We better shut off the generator,’ said Tombes. ‘No spare kerosene. If we let the tank run dry, we won’t be able to operate the elevator. We’ve got plenty of flashlights and flares. We’ll still have light.’

Lupe shook open a backpack. She emptied the contents on the floor. Cloke’s personal stuff. Rolled clothes and a bag of toiletries.

She packed a respirator. She packed NBC gauntlets and a reel of seal tape.

She held up a radiation suit and checked it front and back.

‘What you doing?’ asked Donahue.

‘Bailout bag. Look around you. The building is falling apart. Sooner or later we’ll have to hit the streets.’

Lupe climbed the steps to the entrance gate. She set the bag on the floor alongside a rolled NBC suit. Quick inventory: gloves, overboots, sealer tape. She twisted a fresh filter into her respirator. She propped an axe against the wall.

‘You shouldn’t be out here alone.’

Tombes climbed the steps and joined her. He dumped a backpack and NBC suit on the floor.

‘Makes a lot of sense,’ he said, gesturing to the backs. ‘A fallback plan. That’s army thinking. Someone should have sent your ass to West Point.’

‘This isn’t a fallback plan. I’m leaving soon as dawn breaks. End of story.’

He watched Lupe kneel and tuck a big lock-knife into the side pocket of the backpack alongside a couple of energy bars and a pair of socks.

‘Got a canteen?’

‘No point,’ said Lupe. ‘Temperature at street level is sub zero. No point carrying a brick of ice around. Might as well weigh down my pack with cinder blocks.’

‘What the hell were you doing in jail, girl? You’re smart. You could have been somebody.’

‘I am somebody.’

Lupe straightened up.

‘I’m not going back to Ridgeway, that’s for sure. I’m going to cross the river and get beyond the city.’

‘Brooklyn. The streets will be blocked. And there will be plenty of infected running around. Way more than Manhattan.’

‘I’ll use elevated train track. I’ll walk right over their heads. Travel light. Keep moving. That’s the trick. Don’t let the bastards mass and box you in.’

‘Got a street map?’

‘I don’t need one.’

‘Where will you go? After the city.’

‘North. Far as I can. Avoid towns and cities. Avoid highways. Travel across open country. See if I can reach Canada before winter kicks in for real. Food won’t be a problem. Plenty of pets and livestock running loose. Build a fire every night. Spit some meat.’

They listened to the rising night-wind. The polythene curtain billowed and crackled.

‘The night is turning mean,’ said Tombes. ‘I’d hate to travel in this weather.’

‘Might work in my favour. Colder it gets, slower those fuckers move. Easy to outrun. And cold deadens smell. A person could walk right past them.’

‘You really want to step out there?’

‘Sick of waiting. I’ll leave at first light.’

‘What are you going to do when you reach the river? Build a raft? Strong currents. Stronger than you think. The strait bumping gloves with water from Long Island Sound. The tides can be pretty nasty. Time it wrong, you could be swept out to sea.’

Lupe held up her Motorola. ‘I’ll take a radio. Give updates as I move street-to-street. If I run into trouble, you guys will know to take a different route.’

An unearthly sobbing scream echoed from the hall. The sound built slow, peaked, then died away.

‘Mother of God.’

They looked down the stairwell to the shadows of the station.

A second juddering howl.

‘What the fuck was that?’

Lupe picked up her axe. Tombes unsheathed a knife. They crept down the steps to the hall. They scanned shadows with their flashlights. Scorched dereliction.

‘See anything?’ asked Tombes.

‘If I did, I’d tell you.’

A low, whimpering moan. The sound came from directly above their heads.

They trained their flashlights upwards, examined the dust-furred louvred slat of an air-con vent.

‘Must be Galloway. Fucker is in the pipes, trying to spook us out.’

‘No,’ said Lupe. ‘That’s not Galloway. Listen.’

A faint, keening whine.

‘Cloke. My God, that’s Cloke’s voice. Mother Mary, he’s alive.’

Cloke died, time and again.

His chest was ripped open, his body bled dry. His empty heart had fluttered to a standstill. Yet some kind of fusion was taking place. He was melding with Galloway. Their cardiovascular systems were knitted together. Veins and capillaries entwined. Fresh blood filled Cloke’s flaccid heart and set it pumping. He jerked back to consciousness.

‘Please, I just want it to stop.’

He reached out and scrabbled at the crumbling brickwork, hoping to find a shard he could drive through his eye into his brain.

He gnawed his wrist. He ground his teeth, tried to break skin and tear open an artery. His jaws, his will, were too weak.

He lay on his back. He convulsed as Galloway burrowed beneath his ribs. He lifted his head and slammed it down, tried to knock himself insensible.

‘Stop. Please. Just stop.’

The bodies lay conjoined in the tunnel shadows as Galloway pushed deep into Cloke’s chest cavity.