The Eighth Trumpet (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (45 page)

Kimberlain knew better than anyone the difficulty of his plight. He could shove the explosive-laden cars into the East River tunnel, only to be drowned in the backlash of water if he didn’t give himself enough time to flee. With a full fourteen minutes to go before detonation and only two more stations before the tunnel, that didn’t seem a problem. He was going to make it with time to spare as long as little time was lost when he reached the stalled train beneath Fulton Street.

Ollie was rolling fast by the time the convoy surged around a bend at Chambers Street and sped toward the Park Place station. Fulton Street was next, around yet another bend, and playing it safe, Kimberlain started to ease onto the brake to avoid the kind of collision that could cause derailment. Ollie’s speed dropped, but not fast enough. The final stalled train was perched precariously partway into the curve and partway on the straightaway that led into the East River tunnel. The impact shook Ollie backward, and the grinding pressure on the barge’s gears forced it to stall. Kimberlain kept himself calm and moved his hand to the starter button. Nothing happened.

His thoughts began to race crazily. An explosion here would level the entire financial district in a blast that would shatter every window within a five-square-mile radius, shards of glass turned into deadly projectiles all the way to Central Park. He pressed the starter button again.

The engine ground, and wouldn’t kick over.

It was 10:51, and he was dead on the tracks.

After finishing his six-story climb to the observation deck on the Empire State Building’s 86th floor, Quail charged straight toward the west side and through a door leading outside onto the promenade, The winds howled up at him, and he struggled to lean over to find a view of the festivities far below. Construction equipment was everywhere in his way. The promenade was undergoing extensive renovations, and he could smell wood and sawdust. Many of the J-shaped bars, normally curling inward to form a safety railing atop the retaining wall, had been removed to allow easy access to the promenade from the scaffolding that had been erected four stories down the building on all sides.

The huge balloons alerted him to the Broadway parade site, and he focused down on the squeezed-together swell of humanity that would soon perish by his hand. From such a distance, they had no identity other than the faceless mass that they were, and when the screams came they would seem as one. Quail started to reach into his pocket for the detonator.

The shuffling of footsteps to his rear made him turn just in time to see the two-by-eight plank coming forward. He ducked but didn’t sink low enough to avoid all of Peet’s blow. The right side of his head flamed, then numbed. He was dazed but saw the next blow coming in time to twist out of the way, and Peet’s plank splintered on impact against the concrete retaining wall that stretched just past their waists.

The Dutchman reached over to his side and tore one of the J-shaped curls from a section of steel grating. He leaped back to his feet just as Peet grasped hold of a five-foot-long iron bar and faced off against him. Quail held his piece of grating like a giant scythe. It wasn’t razor sharp, of course, but it was finished in a tip that could slice through bone as easily as flesh. The two giants stalked each other around the narrow walkway running between the glassed-in observation deck and the retaining wall. The first corner brought both added depth and width for them to maneuver, and Peet seized the opportunity to launch an attack with his more cumbersome weapon.

The steel bar sizzled through the wind straight overhead at Quail. But the Dutchman deflected it with his scythelike piece of safety rail. The bar continued its momentum, and the cement beneath it fractured at the crash. Quail immediately followed up the move with a sideways swipe aimed for Peet’s throat. The strike was too low, though, and Peet was too fast. He backpedaled and twisted sideways, so the best Quail could manage was to slice through his clown costume. Blood oozed through the green fabric from the gash, but Peet felt no pain.

Quail came in overhead with his promised curl of death, and now it was Peet’s turn to block and retaliate. He met the scythe at one end of the steel bar and rotated the other down onto the Dutchman’s head. Quail bellowed and reeled, swiping at the air with his weapon to keep Peet from closing while he was stunned.

But Peet had
already
closed for the kill, and he might have had it if luck hadn’t proved to be on the Dutchman’s side. Quail banged hard against the concrete retaining wall, and the J-shaped curl dangled low by his side and nearly slipped from his grasp. With the blur of Peet nearly upon him, Quail was merely trying to regain his grip when his awkward motion drove the tip of the scythelike weapon into Peet’s thigh.

The pain and shock forced the bald giant backwards with over an inch of the curl’s steel tip still stuck down deep in his flesh. He stumbled into a workbench and lost his balance, finding himself gazing up at the sky as he felt for the handle of the curl to tear it from his leg. While still down and dazed, he was already considering the dart that would plunge it into Quail. But the Dutchman had the sense to realize that what he needed most was another weapon when something caught his eye halfway between him and Peet.

A circular saw, still plugged in.

With a scream that echoed through the upper stories of New York City, Peet had just torn the tip of the steel curl from his own flesh—blood, muscle, and sinew trailing behind—when the Dutchman lunged. His impact caught Peet by surprise, and his leg exploded in fresh agony as Quail toppled him back over the workbench. Peet felt for the scythelike thing, only to find he’d lost it at the same time the grinding noise split his eardrums.

His senses sharpened in time for him to thrust his arms up toward Quail as the Dutchman lowered the circular saw toward his neck. It spun in a rhythmic blur, smelling of wood and lubrication oil. Peet was able to lock both his arms on Quail’s descending wrists, but the Dutchman’s next violent push forced one of them onto his face instead. Peet felt the mask Quail wore for a face stick to his palm as he tried to force the head up and away. Quail’s neck muscles resisted the action and kept the whirling blade lowering slowly toward Peet’s head.

It was close enough to tease his lips when Peet managed to rejoin his second hand to his first on the Dutchman’s wrists. Quail, mask half pulled off, glowered at him with eyes straight from hell. Peet looked into those eyes and saw the part of himself discarded three years before, and he knew it would continue to live on unless he was victorious here today.

The saw began rising, the muscles of both giants throbbing and trembling from the strain. Peet tried to position his legs to kick at the Dutchman, but his position remained too precarious and Quail’s saw too close to chance it. But the saw was electric, which meant there must be a cord, and his eyes found part of it running between the Dutchman’s legs. If he could swing one of his feet far enough to loop his toes around it, he might be able to tear the plug from its socket.

Peet arched his back to better position himself, giving ground in the process, which brought the blade back down to less than an inch from his chin. Hearing its whirl, he felt the toes of his clown shoe close around the cord. Damn things had been lousy for running but were flexible enough to curl around the rubber. He yanked with his leg as hard as he could and felt the cord come free.

The saw stopped instantly. Quail registered that just as he registered Peet springing up in the same instant. The Dutchman let the saw go and lunged at him. But Peet still held the saw cord, and now he quickly brought it up and around Quail’s throat. The Dutchman fought sideways, but by then Peet had wrapped the tough rubber around his flesh, pulling with all his strength. He felt Quail’s bulging neck muscles contract under the pressure and knew he’d cut off the Dutchman’s air. Still the Dutchman managed to flail and stagger toward the concrete retaining wall, which stretched just above his waist. Peet yanked harder, until at last Quail began to sink to his knees, an awful gurgling sound coming from deep in his throat. Peet felt the end near now, felt his greatest rival growing limp, felt him dying, and leaned slightly over to better finish the job.

With that, Quail snapped back to life. The illusion abandoned, he reached behind him to the poorly balanced Peet, grabbed hold of his baggy clown shirt, and yanked it hard enough to bring the bald giant up and over him. Peet flew over the building’s edge, and the force of the projection carried him beyond even the scaffolding into the open air to a fall eighty-six stories below. There was no scream, not a sound. He just vanished into the void of blowing air.

Quail stripped the cord from his throat and grasped the detonator from the pocket of his elf’s suit as, far below, his unsuspecting victims applauded the parade passing by them.

It was 10:55 and Ollie’s engine still hadn’t caught. With only eight minutes left to go before detonation, Kimberlain knew the point was rapidly approaching where even if he managed to get the barge started, there wouldn’t be enough time to drive it into the tunnel
and
get out safely. Barely a half mile remained to be covered but—

Ollie belched a huge plume of black smoke from his exhaust pipes and sputtered.

“Come on,” Kimberlain urged. “Come on!”

And Ollie roared to life with all the enthusiasm of the first burst the Ferryman had gotten from him back at the start. He began to edge forward against the huge line of stalled train cars before him. His pace picked up slowly, and Kimberlain shifted gears to provide added thrust.

There were six minutes left to go by the time he cleared the last of the Fulton Street turn, and less than four when he passed into the Wall Street station gathering speed. The speedometer needle locked at twelve miles per hour, and all the coaxing and shifting in the world wasn’t going to get Ollie to move any faster, given his huge load and the time remaining. In seconds, the stalled train at the head of the convoy would emerge into the East River tunnel, with the explosive-laden cars still a lifetime behind.

The Ferryman figured he could still just barely get the job done but no time would remain for him to escape. If that was the only solution, then so be it. He tapped Ollie’s dashboard almost tenderly. It was throbbing from the incredible weight it was pushing, and even at this low speed the tach needle flirted increasingly with the red.

Kimberlain blocked it out and surged closer to the promised death of the tunnel.

Quail stood there frozen, for how long he couldn’t tell. The sight had to be relished, frozen in memory. He would never get another chance to capture a moment like this, and he had to prolong it. These were going to be
his
victims. Their screams would make him more alive than he had ever been before. Quail drank in the scene one last time, with the semblance of a smile rising to his mangled lips.

He brought the detonator up lovingly before him, started for the button …

And the huge shadow hurled itself over the retaining wall, the Dutchman’s breath leaving him when it impacted upon him.

In the end the scaffolding had saved Peet’s life. Plunging down he managed to reach out for a grip on anything. The saw cord had tangled on a beam, which slowed his descent long enough for him to latch on to the scaffolding. Even then he still had the task of shimmying up steel from more than a story down to reach Quail once again. Just beneath the retaining wall, he found the strength to push off with his arms and fly skyward over the edge legs first.

At impact, the black box of promised death flew from Quail’s hand over the retaining wall and onto the top layer of scaffolding. The collision carried Peet past Quail initially, and the Dutchman recovered his senses enough to lunge over the wall with the detonator in sight.

The Dutchman’s dive onto the scaffolding splintered a portion of the planking which Peet’s leap shattered. Dazed, both men struggled against the powerful winds to reach their feet. Quail made it up first, but Peet’s sudden kick sent the detonator sliding toward the edge, where it teetered briefly and then settled.

Quail bellowed in rage and rushed Peet, who met him head-on, faking a throat strike and going for the Dutchman’s eyes instead. His massive fingers dug deep into one of Quail’s sockets and twisted.

Quail shrieked and Peet’s ears curdled. The Dutchman spun away, and his mask came off in Peet’s hands.

What he saw froze him stiff.

The Flying Dutchman’s face was a mass of purplish veins and ever-drying pus from scalp to chin. Most of his lips were gone, and only a portion of his nose remained. The eye Peet had gorged was swollen and shut, rendered useless or even torn out. The veins lining Quail’s burned face seemed to throb as he rushed forward, wailing even louder.

Peet ducked low at the last moment, and the Dutchman flew over him toward the edge of the scaffolding. Somehow he caught his balance, though, legs dangling in midair, and reached out in front of him for the black box.

Peet wedged one of his arms in a crack when he ducked. Instead of pulling it out, he jammed his free arm down through the crack too. Watching Quail’s hand reeling the detonator toward him as he remained suspended over the edge, Peet then hoisted his arms up simultaneously, with as much of a purchase gained on the splintered edge of the plank as he could muster.

Instantly the board separated from its place on the scaffolding and toppled upward and out. But not before Quail managed to pound a massive hand onto the detonator, depressing the button. His last thought was that it was 11:03, just the time it should have been.

Peet saw the hate, violence, and fury on the face that wasn’t a face at all one final time before the abyss swallowed the Flying Dutchman and he plunged into oblivion.

It had been another glance at the speedometer that gave Kimberlain an idea of how both he and New York City could survive. With Ollie traveling at such a slow speed, he could maybe, just maybe …

The front cars were well into the East River tunnel when the Ferryman thrust open the cab door, to the deafening roar of Ollie’s diesel engine, with exactly two minutes to go before detonation at 11:03. His only hope was to try for a jump that would carry him onto the next set of tracks. A quick sprint along them and up into the Wall Street station would enable him to survive the gush of water charging in through the ruptured underwater tunnel leading to Brooklyn.