Terminus (5 page)

Radio crackle:

‘How’s it looking, Captain?’
Cloke’s voice echoed through the vaulted shadows, abrupt and metallic.

She fumbled for the yellow Motorola handset hanging from a belt loop.

‘Structural damage. Strong chance of subsidence.’ Her voice was muffled by the heavy respirator. ‘Give me a minute. Let me check the place out.’

She unhitched her backpack and dumped it on the bench. She pulled the Glock from a side pocket, slapped a magazine into the butt and chambered a round.

She wiped condensation fog from the Lexan visor of her mask.

She walked deep into subterranean darkness, Maglite projecting a cone of brilliant white radiance ahead of her.

An oak-panelled ticket kiosk. Smashed teller glass crackled underfoot. She leaned through the window. Scattered tokens. A cobwebbed bar-stool chair, seat leather cracked like dried mud. A brass till with ornate lever keys.

The deep recesses of the station hall. The beam of her flashlight ranged across bone-white tiles.

She checked the Glock. She fumbled the safety and adjusted her grip.

She kicked open the door, the impact of her boot gunshot-loud in the oppressive chapel-hush of the deserted station.

The door swung wide. Assault entry. A swift sweep of the room, braced to fire.

A windowless office. A desk and a couple of toppled chairs. A wooden filing cabinet with no drawers. A gramophone next to a stack of 78s sheathed in paper sleeves.

She lowered the weapon.

She checked out the desk. She stroked a finger through dust. Rotary phone, inkwell, blotter. She turned the phone dial and watched it slowly grind back to zero.

She left the office and crossed the ticket hall.

Steps sloped downward.

A brass arrow:

Nariko cautiously descended the steps. Skin-crawl blackness. The long stairway lured her further from the surface world, took her further from help. She fought claustrophobia, the sudden, gut conviction that she was climbing into her own grave.

She reached the bottom of the stairs. Dark water lapped the foot of the steps. She stood at the water’s edge and shone her flashlight into the cavernous tunnel space.

The track-trench and platform were submerged. Drifting detritus. A milky skim of rock dust. Street garbage swept down through the drains: soda bottles, chip bags, clamshell burger cartons, leaves.

The south entrance was blocked with crooked planks. The north tunnel mouth framed impenetrable darkness.

Something white in the water. Nariko trained the beam. A naked body, floating face down, hand locked round an empty whiskey bottle. Hard to tell gender. Bloated bruise-flesh marbled with livid veins.

She raised the pistol and fired a shot into the cadaver’s flank. Crack. Puff of muzzle smoke. Meat-smack as the bullet punctured inert flesh.

She watched the corpse, waited for movement. A couple of air bubbles broke water. She steadied her aim and fired a second shot. The round blew out the back of the cadaver’s cranium. The impact sent the carcass drifting in a slow and stately pirouette into deep shadow.

She unhooked her radio.

‘The place is deserted. The subway tunnel is flooded. It was a wasted journey.’

‘No sign of Ekks?’

‘No sign of anyone.’

‘We’ve got to get below ground, Captain.’

‘The emergency stairs are choked with rubble. Give me two minutes. I’ll crank up the elevator.’

Nariko struck a flare. It burned fierce red. She held it above her head and peered into the shifting shadows of the plant room.

She put the flare on a brick ledge, let it fizz and smoke.

She crouched next to a big traction motor bolted to the concrete floor. Dust-furred hoist gear.
Murphy Elevator Company, Louisville.
Cracked rubber belts and interlocking gears. A cable drum controlled counterweights in an adjacent shaft.

She unhitched her backpack. She set it on the floor, unbuckled the straps and pulled out a compact Schneider two-stroke generator. She wrenched the starter cord. The motor sputtered and whined like a lawnmower. Puff of exhaust fumes. She attached bulldog leads to corroded copper terminals and threw a web laced, wall-mounted knife switch. Pop and spark. 120 volts AC. Steady hum.

She returned to the ticket hall, struck a second flare and threw it down.

A cage elevator:

Nariko unhooked her radio.

‘Okay. You got power. Take her up.’

Clank and shudder as the elevator began to ascend.

Nariko peered upwards into the brick-lined shaft. She watched the wooden platform rise out of sight. She watched the counterweights descend on rails.

The filigree clock hand of the floor indicator gradually swung from
Sub
to
6
. Brief pause, then the elevator began its descent.

Cloke.

He stepped from the elevator. He looked around the flare-lit ticket hall. Flickering shadows. Porphyry columns. Mosaic tiles. Tannoy horns. A leaded glass light dome.

‘Place is a tomb,’ he said, voice muffled by his respirator. ‘The old Federal Building. Walked past the place a bunch of times. No idea they had a derelict subway terminal hidden in the basement.’

Nariko helped drag a Peli trunk from the elevator. Lid stencil:

She slammed the gate and spoke into her radio.

‘Clear. Sending her back up.’

‘Ten-four.’

‘Where’s the street entrance?’ asked Cloke.

‘This way.’

A brass arrow pointed upwards to street level.

They climbed the steps. A cage gate sealed the entrance like a portcullis. Nariko shone her flashlight through the lattice grille.

Darkness. Merciless rain.

A garbage-strewn side street. Toppled dumpsters. An abandoned motorcycle on its side.

Flakes of ash drifted to earth: fallout blown from ledges, parapets and rooftops. Burned paper. Melted textile fibres. Carbonised people.

A warning notice spray-stencilled on brickwork next to a fire escape:

A lightning flash lit a broken, skeletal figure as it feebly dragged itself through rainwater. Ratty overcoat and a watch cap. Advanced infection: metallic sarcomas erupted from flesh.

A homeless guy. Probably didn’t have the resources to flee the city when the outbreak began. Hid in a shitty basement somewhere, ate from cans and sucked a crack stem while loudspeaker trucks cruised street-to-street broadcasting martial law.

The creature hauled shattered, useless legs. Terrible blistered burns down the left side of its body. An empty eye socket wept pus. The remaining jet-black eye fixed on Nariko.

‘Jesus,’ said Nariko. ‘That guy really caught the crispy.’

‘Must have been out in the open when the bomb dropped,’ said Cloke. ‘Seared by the thermal flash. Classic gamma burn.’

‘They were people once. The infected. Easy to forget.’

Nariko raised the pistol and took aim. The slow-dying creature turned towards her and struggled to raise an arm. It reached towards the light.

‘Don’t waste your ammunition,’ said Cloke. ‘It stopped being human a long time ago. It’s beyond your help.’

She lowered the Glock.

‘How many prowlers are left, do you think?’ she asked.

‘Most died in the initial blast, I suppose. Those inside the detonation zone would have been vaporised in a millisecond. Those outside the heat-core would have been ripped apart by a hurricane of high velocity glass and metal. The rest, those that were far enough from the hypocentre to survive the initial explosion, are fatally irradiated. They won’t last long. Accelerated cellular breakdown. Couple of weeks from now Manhattan will be truly lifeless. No birds, no grass. Nothing but scorched rubble.’

‘When do you think New York will be safe for human habitation?’

‘Some of the isotopes will decay over the next few months, but plenty of contaminants will seep into the soil, the water. This region will be lingering death for the next quarter of a million years.’

Cloke jerked the gate.

‘I don’t trust this latch. Do we have any chain?’

‘I’ll look around, see what I can find.’

‘Help me curtain the entrance. We’ll decontaminate as best we can.’

They lashed polythene sheet across the lattice gate, then returned to the ticket hall.

Cloke strapped a water tank to his back. A steam cleaner for blasting graffiti from brickwork. He hosed walls and pillars with 0.5% hypochlorite solution.

‘Now you.’

Nariko stood cruciform, enveloped in a jet of broiling vapour.

‘Do me.’

She shouldered the cleaner and scoured Cloke front and back. Condensed water pooled on the floor. She blasted run-off towards the platform steps.

Cloke flipped latches and opened the crate. Radiological equipment set in foam. He selected a Geiger counter. A yellow handset with an LCD screen. He tested for power. He took a reading.

‘It’s okay. You can take off your mask.’

Nariko pulled the respirator from her face. She massaged strap welts.

She unzipped, and stepped out of her C-BURN radiological suit. She kicked off heavy butyl overboots and stripped down to Fire Department fatigues. A blue T-shirt with an embroidered breast patch: a snarling rodentine face.

She lifted the hem of the shirt and towelled sweat from her face.

Cloke shrugged off his suit.

‘Stinks in here. Damp and rot.’

Nariko sniffed.

The acrid stink of melted synthetics and seared flesh filtered from the streets above.

‘Burned plastic. The whole city.’

Cloke checked the Geiger unit. He held it towards the station entrance, watched numerals flicker.

‘How bad?’ asked Nariko.

‘Hard to tell without proper dosimeters. Those minutes we spent outside were the worst. Fully exposed, transferring gear from the chopper to the roof. Got to be eighty, ninety roentgens, out in the open. Maybe more. How long were we up there? Six, seven minutes before we got under cover? The suits gave us some protection, but we still took a heavy hit. Not so bad down here. Concrete and bedrock protect us from the worst. Every hour probably the equivalent of a chest X-ray.’

‘Twenty-four hours until the chopper picks us up.’

‘We should be okay if we stay below ground.’

‘We’re on our way down.’

‘Ten-four,’ said Nariko.

The elevator hummed and rattled. The floor indicator counted down from
6
to
Sub.

Lupe and Galloway slowly descended into view.

Nariko pulled back the rusted gate. Metal shriek.

Jab with the shotgun barrel.

‘Move.’

Lupe shuffled out into the ticket hall. Her ankle shackle forced baby steps.

‘Stand still, both of you,’ said Cloke.

He hosed them head to toe.

‘All right,’ said Nariko. ‘You can take off your masks.’

Galloway pulled back his rubber hood and peeled off his respirator.

Nariko loosened head harness straps and removed Lupe’s mask.

‘How you doing?’ asked Nariko.

Lupe held out her hands.

‘You folks going to uncuff me, or what? I got nowhere to run.’

Galloway unzipped his NBC suit. His armpits were blotched dark with sweat. He unclipped cuff keys from a belt ring. He threw them to Nariko.

Nariko released Lupe’s shackles. Galloway stood back, shotgun raised.

‘Pull any shit, I’ll blow your fucking legs off.’