6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (12 page)

I look down at the empty streets below,
actually missing my six hundred dollar binoculars. The sky is a
patchwork of dark grey clouds and bright blue sky. There are no
birds flying, no cars honking, no dogs barking.

Even though I don’t quite know how everything
went bad, I know instinctively that things are worse than I’d ever
thought possible. I’d inadvertently caused this shift in the city,
but what’s more important is that it was a mistake.

Having been battered the previous day, my
brain feels deeply bruised. It’s not the only message my body is
sending my brain. My stomach growls. I force myself to go
downstairs. I take the steps slowly. I walk out to the street. The
light bites into my brain. It’s a weird cloudy light. The cars
piled up still clog the street and there’s that Humvee. The windows
are shattered. The soldiers’ bodies are splayed out on the street,
beaten, and trampled.

I walk to the corner of ninety-sixth where a
broken water main floods the street.

Suddenly, the door to a building across the
street from me bursts open. A redheaded woman wearing a pink robe
runs toward me. She’s sneezing up so much mucus she can’t speak.
She collides with me. Her eyes are blood shot, and her skin looks
blue. The woman holds on to my arms. Her grip tightens and as she
slumps to the sidewalk she pulls me with her. Bubbles form on her
lips as she tries to speak. Then her eyes cloud over and she dies
in my arms. She was waiting for someone, anyone, to hold on to. She
wanted help. Help I couldn’t give her.

I feel dizzy. At first I think that seeing
her die is making me feel ill, then I cough. Blood has splattered
in my palm. I’m sick! I switch into full flight mode. I run to my
building, remembering the red syringe Zilla had given me. I fly up
all twelve flights. My adrenaline smashes through my nervous
system. I whip my door open. The red box is still on the coffee
table. I open the box and take out the syringe. Underneath is a
drawing of an arm with a dot. Below the drawing it says:

‘
Just so you know, your true contribution,
all those cameras and listening devices you set up at the police
stations, the National Guard, the defense contractors and the
satellite control facility were filled with a deadly virus. They
released the virus in an aerosol micro-spray. The virus is
unstoppable, and so is our progress. The syringe is a vaccine. We
believe in rewarding our soldiers. Thank you for your
service.

~Zilla’

Without waiting another moment, I plunge the
needle into my shoulder.

My head hangs and I feel like I’m going to
cry, but there are no tears left in me. I knew it. My gut told me
something was wrong. I didn’t listen.
Why didn’t I fucking
listen!

I hear a deep thud. Is it a bomb? Or an
explosion? There’s another one. The windows rattle. Out the window,
I see a Bradley fighting vehicle rolling over cars, smashing them
into twisted piles of junk. The tank hits the sidewalk. Its tracks
kick up debris. It’s alone with no support troops anywhere. I see a
man in a tank top emerge from the top hatch. He’s got long hair,
and he’s smoking a fat cigar. With dizzy realization I turn to face
my empty condo. The walls seem to shrink. They push in on me. What
do I do? At that instant I can hear Zilla’s voice in my head
spitting out those conspiracy theories. I grind my teeth. I have to
kill Zilla. That is the only thing I have left to do on this
Earth.

I
don’t have a
Ferrari to drive anymore. Sucks. I think about walking home but
change my mind. I must be having a moment of clarity because I
realize that the guard can identify me. I will be popped for this
stunt. Maybe the judge will be lenient on me and only give me
twenty years for poisoning millions of people, not life.

I decide to turn myself in instead of
running. Get it over with. Three squares a day doesn’t sound too
bad. I’ve still got some booze left, so I go back inside the
treatment plant and wait for the cops to come get me.

I stumble past the offices and run my badge
to access the mixing room. As I descend down the stairs I start to
sing at the top of my lungs. Two steps down the metal stairs, I
slip. I fall hard, all the way to the bottom, and blink out like
someone pulled my plug.

I wake up lying next to the tap-water
circulation tank with a headache the size of the Chrysler Building.
Blood had saturated my hair and dried.
What the fuck time is
it?
I check my watch. I’ve been passed out for, like, eighteen
hours. It’s midnight the next fuckin’ day! I’m kinda surprised the
cops haven’t found me here. What about the workers? Something weird
is going on.

I decide to go home. They can pick me up
there. As I leave, I open the closet and snip off the plastic tie
that I’d used to cuff the sedated security officer. Oddly enough,
he is still out. Now when he wakes he’ll be able to go home. He was
cool to me, so it was the least I could do. Hell, I did him a
favor. He won’t get sick.

The city is so dark I can’t see a thing. Oh,
but there are stars out. The city that never sleeps is sure taking
a snoozer. The summer air is so fucking hot. I must have descended
into hell.

I walk to Broadway and turn south. My eyes
adjust to the darkness only to see more hell. There are car wrecks
all over the place and dead people in the shadows. I start running.
I live on the edge of East Harlem, which is seven blocks away. I
run one block before I am out of breath. A fire rages in the upper
floors of an apartment building. There are people up there. I think
for a moment about seeing who they are, and if they need help, but
I decide against it. They are probably fucked. I am not about to
get killed helping some strangers.

Further down One Twenty Sixth Street I feel
panic rising. It occurs to me that this might be my handiwork. Did
the bacteria Zilla gave me kill everyone? How is that even
possible? It was supposed to get everyone sick. No one was supposed
to die. I race all the way home. I need a few hits from my bong and
a few shots of tequila.

My building’s front door is wide open. A
scrawny dude is sprawled out in the doorway. I step over his
motionless body. He must have been a neighbor, but I’ve never met
him.
Sucks to be you, dude.
The hallway is so dark I can’t
see my own hands. Someone upstairs screams. I just want to get to
my apartment, to crawl into my bed and wake from this. It seems
like a dream, a really bad dream.

I stumble to the stairway and start to climb.
I feel like one of the Ghostbusters climbing to the top of Central
Park West. I keep my hand on the railing while trying to keep my
feet from missing a step. Three flights up I have to step over
another body.

I pull my shirt collar over my nose, trying
to cover a rank smell that fills the stairwell. That fails because
all I smell is piss. I forgot I pissed myself. I find my apartment
and lock myself inside.

The morning comes. I leave my apartment only
because I need food. I drank and ate everything in my house and
smoked all of my weed. I’m hungry, and getting hungrier by the
second. Doritos just don’t fill the stomach like a fat burrito
does. I’m also going stir crazy. My DVD player don’t work, and
there’s no TV, running water, or lights.

Outside my door there’s a package I hadn’t
noticed in the pitch black. It has a bright red label on the front
and the words
‘URGENT’
stamped all over the box. I rip the
tape off and open it. Inside is a red syringe suspended in a
plastic package. High tech lookin’, straight from the corporate
machine. I pick up a note tucked beside the syringe. It says:

‘
Inject into your arm or die with the rest
of them.

~Zilla.’

I plunge the syringe into my arm. So it was
me that dropped the ultimate bomb on this city. I didn’t just make
people sick, I killed them all. Shit. I kinda freeze for a minute,
then I chuck the empty syringe down the stairwell. I watch it fly
down the first flight, careen off the railing, and shatter on the
opposite wall. It’s oddly beautiful. It holds me in its echo for a
moment. I’m safe, right? That was my get-out-of-death-free card,
right? I continue down the stairs, light on my feet.

Outside the air is sweltering. It’s frickin’
Hades out here. There are dark clouds overhead. Smoke fills the
sky, staining the clouds yellow. Cars and bodies litter the streets
and sidewalks. Trash and debris are everywhere. It’s like the
aftermath of a big outdoor concert — except for the dead
bodies.

After looking around I decide to go somewhere
familiar. I walk up town a handful of blocks to Francisco’s Big
Bellies, my favorite breakfast burrito place. If they’re deserted
like everywhere else, I might find some leftovers. I round the
corner. I can see Francisco’s front windows. Big brightly painted
letters advertise the Big Red Chick Pig Burro. I like that one.
Lots of eggs and red sauce and sausage. The front door opens
easily. A bell chimes. Rick ain’t here. Neither is Juanita. She’s a
cutie, well, was a cutie. Maybe she survived. Maybe she and I. . .
never mind.

I walk past my favorite seat and go behind
the counter. Chairs are knocked over. Half-filled cups of coffee
still sit on the tables along with half-eaten burritos and
empanadas. The muffins behind the glass display still look good. I
grab one and cram it down my throat and stick one in my pocket for
later.

“You guys take an IOU?!” I yell with my mouth
full. I find a cooler in the back with precooked food still lookin’
good. The power has only been out for, what, two days max? There
are no eggs, but I find a tub of potatoes and a package of
precooked bacon. I wrap them up in Francisco’s famous huge
tortillas. I return to my favorite seat at the far end of the
counter. I clear the counter with a wide swipe of my arm. I look at
my cold breakfast burrito. My head feels heavy for a minute, so I
just stare at it. This will be the last time I eat here. When the
feeling passes, I hold the burrito into the air, “Frankie should
have gotten a red syringe!” I shout. Then I tear into the burrito.
So good.

After breakfast I decide to look around
outside. I suddenly get a rush of energy. It’s like I am at that
Bed Bath & Everything all by myself again, but this time the
empty store is now an empty world. I feel like I’m a kid, too. I
pass an old man, dead as roadkill, on the corner of Morningside
Avenue, and take his cane. I walk around, swinging the cane over my
head and around my finger. I run up to a car and smash the cane
into the side window. The glass shatters and the cane cracks. I
throw it aside and turn toward Central Park.

I wish I had that Nerf gun. Scratch that, a
real gun. An R.B.F.G. A really big fuckin’ gun. I turn the corner
and my desire is realized. There’s a sandbag wall sheltering a
military Humvee.