6th Horseman, Extremist Edge Series: Part 1 (14 page)

I look it over. The doors are smashed, but I
notice a bent up piece of the Lincoln’s hood is blocking the
passenger side door and preventing it from opening. I wrestle to
bend it out of the way. Doesn’t budge. There are probably no guns
inside anyway. I start to leave.

“Hey, you! Help me!”

Someone’s inside the car. A cop! I run back
to the Lincoln hood and pull as hard as I can.

“I got you!” I yell. I feel a rush of power
in my arms.

Finally, the black hood gives way. I bend it
as far down as it will go. With the cop car door unblocked I grab
its handle and try to wrench the door open. It’s stuck.

“Oh my god,” a lady cop yells. “Get me out!
Get me out! You’ve got to help me!” She kicks the door like a rabid
dog. She’d have chewed her arm off if that would have freed
her.

“Can you, like, kick at the same time I
pull?” I ask, not sure how we’re going to get the door open.

“Grab the edge that is closest to the
handle,” she says. “I’ll count to three.”

We simultaneously kick and pull. The door
makes a loud creaking sound and opens. I reach in and help her out.
She has barely enough room to slip by the twisted metal. Not quite
enough room, actually, her shirt rips on a jagged metal piece and
cuts into her side. She takes it like a man. She’s a cop after all.
I should’ve expected it.

I give her some of my water. “I’m Tanis.”

“I’m Officer . . . scratch that, just call me
Hana.” She’s in bad shape and looks how I feel.

“You been in there for a while?” She’s pretty
for a cop. Dirty blond hair, nice lips, green eyes, and buff. She’s
wearing a white tank top and just panties. She sees me lookin’, so
she finds her pants and puts them on.

Hana attempts to stop her side from bleeding
by holding her blue shirt on the wound. “I’ve been trapped for
three days.”

I give her some beef jerky I grabbed from the
market.

“Thank you.” She devours the jerky.

“I was trapped, too. In a building, though. I
have no idea how long I was in there. I don’t even know what
happened,” I say, intentionally leaving out the fact that I was the
hacker that brought down the satellites, and the fact that I was
saved by the guy that helped me do it. I’m only fifteen, but I’m
smart enough to see that I was stupid for trusting Zilla. He’d
given me a computer virus that did way more than steal a bunch of
emails. I never even looked over the final code he’d given me.
Stupid! Well, there is a bigger plot here, a conspiracy, and I’m
the stupid kid that let ‘em do it. I opened the door. Now the city
has been wiped out and everyone murdered. Someone will be after me.
I have to be careful what I say. No one can know I helped take the
city down. I’ll never speak of it again. I tell myself over and
over in my head. Maybe I won’t get caught.

“I was locked in my Dad’s office. Don’t know
how the door got opened.” I shrug.

Hana tries to smile. “We’re lucky.” She
drinks more water then looks around. “No one could hear me yelling,
or they just ignored me. Lots of people were running around. When
the bridge became gridlocked with the cars, people abandoned them.
They ran from this city like rats escaping a sinking ship.
Yesterday, there were a few stragglers stumbling down the bridge. I
couldn’t see much, but I could hear people crying, yelling, and
running. Then everything went quiet.”

I try not to watch her adjust her sport bra
and reaffix her belt to her waist. She is nice lookin’, that’s for
sure. Too old for me though. She’s maybe a bit younger than my Ma,
but not by much. Hana checks her pistol, pulls the hammer back,
then clips the holster strap over the cocked hammer.

Hana sees something then takes off. She hops
over the black Lincoln and runs to a woman that’s lying in between
the cars. “Hey!” she yells.

I follow her.

Hana rolls the woman over. “Whoa!” The woman
is still holding on to a hospital mask that covers her mouth. Her
eyes are bloodshot, and her jaw is covered in mucus. Her skin looks
white and leathery, and the veins are swollen. The woman is dead,
real dead.

“What happened?” Hana asks. “It wasn’t
supposed to be like this.”

“I don’t know. But the whole city is dead.” I
look away. “I walked through a million dead people.”

“Whatever made people sick ended up killing
them. The CDC said it was non-lethal.” Hana mumbles to herself. “I
thought I saw an EMP attack. That’s what killed all the cars and
the electronics. Part of a major terrorist attack. A well planned
attack.”

“Yeah, totally fucked everyone here.” I
mumble. I feel shame. If I hadn’t done my part, none of this would
have happened. Would the military have been able to organize a
better response if they still had satellites?

Hana’s head sags. It looks like she’s crying.
After a nanosecond of silence she snots into a handkerchief and
dries her eyes. “Where were you going?” she asks me.

I nod toward the Queensboro Bridge. “I live
across the river in Forest Hills. I’m going to try and find my
family.”

“I’d like to go home, but I won’t. I live in
the city. Something tells me I’ll never go home again. So, I’d like
to see my folks too. They live in Long Beach. I can go with you
until you get home. Then I’ll go find my folks.”

“That would be cool,” I say.

We start down the bridge, weaving in and out
of the cars. The bridge is epic. The huge steel beams that
crisscross over our heads are held in place by huge steel rivets.
The brick towers are solid and thick. I used to love this bridge,
but now it looks crooked. There must have been a few fires here
because there are black marks on the tan girders.

When the cars get too thick to navigate in
between, I jump on the hood of a Mercedes Benz. I intend to
hopscotch again, but I stop short. Hana jumps onto the hood next to
me. She grabs my arm and steadies herself. I look at the bridge. At
the point where the bridge crosses Roosevelt Island, it’s mangled
and bent down toward the river. The rest of the Queensboro Bridge
is gone. It’s crooked and totally useless after being blown to
bits.

Hana hops off the Benz. “The bridge has been
taken out. I heard the explosions. The blast rocked all the cars
around me and gave me a bit of a concussion.”

We stand at the end of the bridge and stare.
The water far below moves along. The Roosevelt Island towers are
completely obliterated, just piles of rubble. So New York is
screwed. I’ve never looked at something so real, so frickin’ scary,
so wrong. Above me, the bridge’s metal girders are twisted and
torn. Power cables are cut like beheaded snakes. Smoke and dust
cling to the air and rips at my throat when I breathe. A small
shutter rumbles through the bridge’s wrecked structure like its
nerves still have pent-up energy coursing through them. It’s a
corpse in its own right. Just like that dead and bloated body
hanging out of the car back there.

“How we gonna cross the river?” I ask. “Use
the subway tunnels?”

She scans the area. “No. This bridge was
taken out on purpose. Maybe an F-18 dropped a couple of missiles on
the last tower over there. The subway tunnels were probably taken
out by some bunker busters as well. It looks like the government
tried to keep people from getting off New York Island.” She had a
worried look on her face. “We’re gonna have to swim it.”

“I’m not a good swimmer. I’m a bit of a nerd.
I do my thing on the computer.” I look at the water. It looks cold
and terrible to swim in. “Besides, I was told you could get swept
out to sea. The current is too strong here.”

She nods slowly. “Well, if you aren’t a good
swimmer then that might be a death trap. We can try going north to
the Kennedy Bridge. If that’s blown out then the river is a much
shorter swim, and I can help you cross it. Maybe we’ll find a
fishing boat up there.”

“That sounds okay to me. Don’t think we have
a choice, huh?”

“I don’t think so.”

We head north in the heat and the stink, both
wanting to go home, to ball games, crap on the TV, and good
dinners.

I
wake up in my
sleeping bag in the middle of a field in Central Park, just as big
raindrops land on my head. I don’t get up right away. Instead, I
open my mouth and let the rain splash on my tongue.

It should have tasted sweet, but it didn’t.
It’s as rancid as the butt of an old cigarette. As I leap to my
feet, a pinch of pain spikes in my lower back. “Sleeping on the
ground is gonna mess up my figure,” I say out loud, though I’m the
only living person around. I grab my bag of food and pull out a
bagel. Dry, cold, stale, it is delicious.

I stand and stretch. The rain is a drizzle,
but it’s gonna get heavier. I notice dark clouds churning above me.
It’s gonna get bad real soon. Suddenly, I feel like throwing up.
It’s the stench of the city. I gotta get outta here. Maybe there’s
a quarantine line, and if I can get to it, I’ll have that bank
account with my half million in it.

I grab my stuff and head north. I know from
the jets two days ago and the explosions that the bridges were
probably taken out. So I have to go north and cross the river at
its shortest point. I hate swimming, but I don’t have a choice.
Maybe the rain will keep at a drizzle.

I jog north through the park. The only sound
is the patter of the damp grass under my feet. Just as I near the
northwest end of the park, a huge explosion erupts somewhere around
Fredrick’s Circle. There was a gas station there. The sound rattles
the trees. My ears ring. Through the tall, thick trees I can see a
ball of fire rolling up the sides of the tall buildings. Fresh
black smoke fills the sky. I pick up the assault rifle I nabbed
from those fools in the Bradley. I check the breach; it’s loaded.
Check the clip; it’s full. Safety, off. I verify that the weapon is
set on semi-automatic, look down the sight, and set off.

Somebody did blow up that gas station next to
Fredrick’s Circle. I avoid it and instead head toward Seventh
Avenue. Seventh Avenue goes north and is a few streets east of
Fredrick’s Circle. It seems like a good choice because there’s a
median with trees. That gives me a wider playing field and cover
under the trees. I don’t worry too much about an attack from above.
Looters aren’t usually hiding out in apartments with sniper rifles.
This isn’t Iraq.

#

I did well in Iraq, at first. I kept my wits
about me and kept my guys stocked. It was one of the things I did
really well. I was infantry, one of the few women who kept the
front line supplied with ammo, food, and water. We engaged the
enemy just as much as they did on the front line, especially in
Fallujah.

It was night when the enemy circled around
the front line. We were awakened at dawn by sniper and AK-47 fire.
I knew my shit. It had already been several weeks into the
campaign. I was cut, bloody, infected, and cramping from a bad
period, but I wasn’t worried. I could shut off the pain like a
light switch. I could still hear, see, and fire straight. The army
counselor asked me if I had something to prove. Hell yeah, I
did.

It was still dark, so I flipped my night
vision down and followed my company to the south courtyard. We had
to secure that area for a supply delivery. Everything was quiet at
first. They were waiting. Then one crazy towel head came out of the
alley where we’d just come from. He must have been hiding in a
hole. He should have sent a dozen rounds into my back, but he was a
bad shot. I spun and hit my trigger. I rattled off twenty rounds
into his chest and sprayed the wall with his guts.