End Day (22 page)

“That raises the possibility of another critical paradox. The two groups could cross each other's paths.”

“Not really,” Magus said. “The other ones are going to disappear along with everyone and everything else in less than fourteen hours.”

* * *

N
ATHANIEL
LOOKED
IN
the direction of the frantic shout. The corridor was still lined with ESU personnel—those who had stood their ground while the others fled. Through the gaps created by the deserters he saw a small black object hurtle out of the target doorway. It hit the wall and bounced off onto the floor.

The bottom dropped out of his stomach.

A quick-thinking ESU officer threw his curved riot shield over the grenade and then threw himself belly down on top of it.

Three tightly spaced explosions ripped the air. The blast and flash made the officer and his riot shield jump from the floor, dark smoke billowed around them, then they both came down hard.

For his part, Nathaniel felt as if he had just been snap-kicked center chest. It left a dull ache under his breastbone.

The brave-as-hell ESU officer didn't get up off the shield. He didn't move at all. It was impossible to tell how badly hurt he was or if he was dead. The concussion alone of a grenade detonating that close would be enough to knock a person unconscious.

Two had gone off inside the apartment, though.

They shouldn't have been thrown unless the men inside were already dead.

As Nathaniel was entertaining that grim thought, another officer primed a pair of grenades and two-handed them through the apartment doorway.

No warning shout this time.

The officer chucked and ran.

Instinctively Nathaniel counted down the fuse time in his head. Before he got to three, both grenades flew back into the hall. They had a low-to-high arc, as if they'd been drop kicked. They hit the ceiling, ricocheted off the wall and fell to the floor.

Too far away for the remaining ESU men to reach. A couple of them made it through the nearby doors to the other apartments; the rest sprinted for the building entrance.

Holmes grabbed Nathaniel by the arm and pulled him into a crouch just as a matched pair of deafening whacks shook the walls and sent sharp bits of steel slicing through the air. The pair of ESU men closest to the grenades were cut down in midstride, hit in the back by the spray of shrapnel and slammed onto their faces on the floor. Boiling clouds of dark gray smoke rolled over them.

Nathaniel heard a rumble of heavy footfalls, then the purple hoodies burst through the caustic smoke, apparently unharmed.

They moved remarkably fast for their size and weight. Fast enough to catch up to the rear of the fleeing officers before they could reach the front door. Two of the ESU men were pulled down from behind. Then to Nathaniel's horror, it was tear-open-the-piñata time. Thumb talons and raw power made short work of the body armor and clothing, then the perps slung stripes of gore across the ceiling. The speed with which they killed was astonishing. It was as if they shifted into another gear once they had hold of a victim.

As in the precincts earlier in the day, there was nothing anyone could do to stop the slaughter. Three more officers were dragged down before the others made it out the front door.

The operation's chain of command had been broken. There was no time to alert the snipers. No time to regroup the troops. The remaining survivors were fighting for their lives.

Holmes was below him as they backed up the stairs, firing steadily with his Glock. Nathaniel could see his slugs plucking at purple satin. Holmes was like a machine, a hit with every shot.

But the bullets had no visible effect.

Not so for the grenades.

When one of the creatures came up the staircase after them, Nathaniel saw that half of its face had been de-hided, stripped clean. The short snout was without hide, as well. Shiny blue bone showed underneath. It looked as though the grenade had gone off right under its chin. The shrapnel wounds were devastating, but the creature seemed to be in no pain. And there was no sign of blood.

Holmes continued to fire as the monster mounted the steps, and they moved backward, shooting it over and over, full in the face. The bullets zinged off the blue bone, taking loose chunks of hide with them. When Holmes's slide locked back, Nathaniel tried to pull him aside so they could switch positions and he could hold the monster at bay with more close-range gunfire. But the creature had already grabbed the ESU leader by the front of the armor vest. A tug of war ensued as Holmes tried to reload from his combat harness. Nathaniel couldn't get off a shot because his brother officer was smack-dab in the way.

The standoff ended when the purple bastard raised Holmes with one hand, lifting his boot soles two feet off the ground. Nathaniel hung on for all he was worth while trying to bring his gun muzzle to bear, but he lost his grip when the perp twisted away and slammed Holmes face-first into the wall. The chinstrap on the lieutenant's helmet broke, and it went flying over the bannister railing. The impact punched a face-shaped hole in the lathe and plaster.

The hoodie let the limp body slide down the stairs, feet first.

Nathaniel put bullet after bullet into the side of the bastard's head. The slugs ricocheted off, cutting holes in the wall and ceiling.

Again they had no effect.

The creature didn't even look mad as it followed him up the stairs. Nathaniel dropped to a knee on the edge of the second-floor hallway and put five quick shots dead center in its massively bulging groin.

Effect.

A pair of new expressions lit up the monster's ruined face. First surprise. Then pain. As much as the bone structure would allow, it grimaced. The hoodie was stopped cold.

It was only a temporary reprieve, Nathaniel knew. The low-aimed bullets had zinged off without penetrating. He jumped up and dashed through the first open door, which led to the apartment of Veronica Currant, the place where it had all started.

The hallway behind him quaked from the footfalls of his pursuer. Because it was the closest cover, he considered diving into the strange machine and closing the door, but that looked too much like a dead end—what if the lock didn't work? What if the monster knew how to open it from the outside?

As the enforcer burst through the doorway, Nathaniel ran for the nearest, emptied front window. He didn't stop when he jumped onto the sill. He launched himself into space, legs churning.

* * *

W
HEN
ESU
SNIPER
Matt Carter first looked down on the kill zone from a rooftop across the narrow street, he saw the mission ahead as a chance for Team Alpha's redemption. He knew his fellow sniper, Pete Balwan, and their spotter, Joe Gaspers, felt the same way. Their unit had been embarrassed earlier in the evening by a different group of perps who had managed to slip out from under their guns without taking so much as a scratch. Lieutenant Holmes had rubbed it in over the com link, too. That still stuck in Carter's craw.

Three minutes into the operation, after a frenzy of autofire inside the building, Carter still had no targets. No one had exited, and the standing order was to hold fire until suspects tried to leave. The limo that had brought them to the scene sat double-parked in the middle of the street with its doors wide open and courtesy lights on. There wouldn't be a quick getaway, not with him and Balwan behind a pair of Barretts. But shooting an engine block wasn't what he had in mind. They all had friends in the Eighteenth and the other precincts that had been hit.

He wanted some .50 caliber payback.

Carter pulled back from the night scope's eyepiece and blinked. An annoying flare of light was coming from the second-floor window of an apartment next door. The infrared sight magnified it. Gunfire continued to roll out of the target building and then a cluster of grenades detonated. He had seen the CCTV video from the precincts. That the shooting hadn't slowed down by now was starting to make him nervous. And nervous was the last thing he wanted to be.

When he tucked back into the rifle butt and scope, he saw some of Team Beta stumble out the front door, jump down the steps and hightail it down the street. A second cluster of grenades went off, and more ESU officers poured out onto the street. A moment later a man in an NYPD windbreaker jumped out a second-story window. He dropped behind a hedge, and Carter lost sight of him.

There were no hostile targets in pursuit of the officers. The shooting continued inside the building.

“What the hell's going on down there?” Balwan shouted at him.

“How should I know?”

“I've been trying to get a com link to command,” Gaspers said. “Nothing back. No answer. I think the shit has hit the fan.”

“We have to stay put until we get the call to stand down,” Carter stated.

“The entrance!” Gaspers shouted.

Carter swung his sights to the left. Four purple-hooded suspects were running down the steps of the building. They filtered between the burned-out cars and started to cross the street in their direction.

“Shoot 'em! Shoot 'em!” Gaspers said.

Carter took a quick, settling breath, then squeezed off a round. The Barrett boomed and bucked. Balwan's gun and the other fifties along the line of rooftops joined in.

Through his scope Carter saw the impacts. The heavy slugs stopped their targets in midstep and drove them to the pavement on both knees, but they didn't go all the way down. There was no plume of blood and guts. And after a second, they hopped up and kept on coming.

He felt a flutter of panic in the pit of his stomach as he worked the bolt. No one got up after taking a fifty center mass. No one. It should have made a hole big enough to stick a fist through. He led his target and fired again.

And got the same nonresult, but with a ten-ring head shot this time.

On either side of him, the Barretts along the rooftops were rapid firing.

“Bullshit,” he said to himself. “Bullshit!”

He got a third shot off before his target reached the ground floor of their building. He saw the slug spark as it ricocheted off the hooded head, then spark again as it skipped off the pavement.

There was a loud crash from directly below as the suspect broke through the entry door. And there was similar din from the buildings on either side.

“They're coming for us,” Gaspers said, drawing his sidearm. “Fucking A, they're coming for us.”

Balwan swung around his Barrett to cover the lone entrance to the rooftop. As Carter picked up his weapon and got to his feet, a flurry of gunshots erupted from the neighboring building, then a howling scream that ended abruptly. Through his nightscope he saw a hoodie throwing a sniper off the roof, in pieces.

* * *

E
XPLOSIONS
PUNCTUATED
THE
wall of gunshot clatter from next door. The end was near, Magus knew. Panic had set in. In this place and time, frag grens were the weapon of last resort.

“Pick me up,” he told the driver. “Hurry!”

When the man took a step toward him with open arms and a pained expression Magus said, “No, you idiot,
that
me.”

The driver squatted beside the corpse, slipped his hands under the shoulders and behind the knees, then straightened with his burden. The ruined head hung drooped over his forearm trailing long, swaying strands of congealed gore.

“Where do you want me to put it?” the driver asked as he looked around for a suitable resting place in the empty room.

“Out the damned front window. Step on it!”

Big bore blasters boomed from across the street. They sounded like Fourth of July cannons going off. The ricochets plowed through the brownstone facade, as if it was made of cardboard. A stray round zinged through the room, into the interior wall and kept on going. The near miss made the driver freeze. He looked back over his shoulder, pleading for a reprieve.

“I don't like giving orders twice,” Magus said.

The man lowered his head and rushed up to one of the emptied window frames. After swinging the corpse back and forth a few times to gain momentum, he hurled the limp form feet first through the opening.

With a metallic clunk the body landed in a wrought-iron flower box bordering a tiny street-level courtyard.

“How rich was that?” Magus asked.

It was a rhetorical question.

“Get the captives in the unit,” he told the enforcers. “Take your positions inside. We're out of here.”

Magus always made sure he was the last to leave 2001.

He reached down and hit the on switch of the boom box on the floor. The CD started spinning, and between the booms of heavy caliber weapons outside, Frank Sinatra began the quavering strains of “New York, New York.”

Magus cut a joyous, awkwardly veering, little dance turn, then limped into the unit and closed the door.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Ryan watched the fireball dissolve on the horizon behind the silhouetted park trees, like the last embers of the world's biggest campfire. As the light faded, the underside of the mushroom cloud became less and less distinct, until it blended into the overcast sky and disappeared.

Then silence closed in.

No traffic sounds. No sirens. No blasterfire. No screaming. In the wake of the unthinkable, the city had stopped breathing.

“Is it coming?” Ricky asked in a shaky voice.

No one had to ask him what
it
was; they all knew; overlapping Russian nuke strikes that would eat the city alive and turn everything in a ten-mile radius to ashes and slag.

It
was the end of the world.

If that was the case, there was no reason for them to budge from this spot. Ryan had never put in much thought about where he was going to die. Or where he wanted to die. This seemed as good a place as any, and he was in as good a company as he could hope for.

Seconds passed as he waited for the barrage to begin. Seconds now were precious to him. He reached down into the front compartment and took Krysty by the hand. When she looked up at him, her emerald eyes were shining and there were tears streaming down her beautiful face.

“I love you more than anything,” he said.

“I know, lover. And I love you.”

Behind him in the compartment, the other companions were embracing. Slapping one another's backs and saying words that had never seemed appropriate until now. Not just “thank you for having my back.”

To one another they said, “You are my brother.”

“You are my sister.”

“You are my steely fucking heart.”

And when the words that needed to be said were all said, they moved apart and prepared to die.

A minute passed, then five, and they were still waiting.

“What's the bastard holdup?” J.B. finally asked in exasperation.

The remark was so off the wall that it made them all laugh.

“What's the matter, you got a hot date on the other side, J.B.?” Krysty asked.

“I thought this party was organized,” J.B. said. “But it's the same old, same old clusterfuck. Hurry up and wait.”

“Or ‘Due to circumstances beyond our control the scheduled end of the world will be experiencing a slight delay. We thank you in advance for your patience,'” Mildred said.

More laughter rang out.

As time passed without incident, Ryan began to rethink their analysis of the situation. Maybe they'd jumped to the wrong conclusion. Maybe the explosion hadn't been Armageddon's first strike after all. He wasn't the only one with doubts.

“If it hasn't happened by now, folks, I don't think it's going to happen,” Vee said. “An all-out missile launch is just that. The superpowers aren't going to wait around for the first one to hit before they fire some more. It's shoot until all the bullets are gone, then open your eyes.”

“She's right,” Mildred said. “This isn't the way it's supposed to happen.”

On the horizon, the glow of the fireball had dwindled until it was barely visible behind the row of dark trees.

“If it isn't happening, what are we waiting for?” J.B. asked. “Let's get back to her apartment and make the chron jump.”

“Indeed, let's,” Doc said.

“Crank it up, Vee,” Ryan instructed. He didn't have to remind her that time was an issue.

Once again she flattened the gas pedal and they shot off, engine wailing. Over her shoulder she said, “That blast is between us and my apartment. How wide a berth should I give it?”

“Streets might be blocked by debris,” Ryan said. “Don't want to have to double back to get around it. Better swing wide as you can.”

“Don't worry about the traffic signs,” Mildred said. “There's no such thing as a one-way street anymore.”

“Like minds,” Vee replied.

In the dark, with the berth Vee gave it, they couldn't see the blast crater or its glow, but the haze of smoke pouring through the streets was triple thick. Vee had to slow down because, even with fog lights, they couldn't see more than twenty feet ahead.

With the engine's howl gone, they could hear the sounds of an intense firefight in the distance. As they drove on, the noise grew louder and louder.

When the smoke started to thin out, Vee stomped the gas again. “We're two minutes away!” she shouted over her shoulder.

In those two minutes the firefight peaked. There were tightly spaced explosions. To Ryan they sounded like grens popping off inside a building. By the time Vee turned the EMT truck onto her street, it was over.

Her headlights lit up the rear of a very long wag parked in the middle of the road. All its doors were open. And the light inside was on.

“Good grief,” she said as she took in the ruin that surrounded them. “It's Mogadishu.”

Ryan didn't know what that meant, but there were no police wags in sight. “Everybody out,” he said after she pulled up behind the long wag. “Stay low. Watch for movement in the windows. We're on triple red.”

On his signal they moved up on either side of the long wag. He poked his head in the rear compartment. The white leather upholstery was dazzling, but it had puddles on it. Stinking puddles.

“Magus beat us here,” he told the others. “Could have already jumped back to Deathlands.”

“I don't think so,” Vee said with conviction. “Magus is still here.” She aimed her blaster at the front of the apartment building next to hers. “Not going anywhere anytime soon, either.”

Ryan turned and saw the body sprawled across a long flower box not thirty feet away. Keeping wary eyes on the windows above, and blasters ready, they all moved closer.

It looked like a cast-off meat puppet. The flesh-and-bone part of its head had been completely blown away, leaving the cirque of steel plate intact. The cavity had been virtually emptied of all its contents, right down to the brain pan. The guy wires on its cheeks had snapped, and the metal half of its jaw, complete with a row of metal teeth, drooped down the side of its neck.

“No way to mistake that unspeakable abomination,” Doc said.

“Hard to believe it's over,” Mildred added. “And that we weren't the ones to chill it.”

“Yeah,” Jak said, poking the corpse with the muzzle of his Python.

“Cops must have gotten lucky,” Vee stated.

“It's the most recent version,” Ryan said. “It's got two steel eyes.”

A single gunshot roared from the roof across the street, ending the discussion and making them scatter and duck for cover. It wasn't aimed at them, though. There was no follow-up.

“That's a bastard fifty cal,” J.B. said.

From the top of the building opposite, someone started screaming. Before the companions could react, the noise stopped. A few seconds later body parts started raining down into the street. An arm, then a head hit the roof of the long wag and bounced into the gutter.

“Magus might be gone, but the enforcers are still here,” Krysty said.

“I think we'd best be on our way,” Doc suggested.

“I've got to release the paramedic first,” Mildred said. “At least he'll have a chance to make a break for it.”

“Go ahead, we'll cover you,” Krysty told her.

Keeping low and moving fast, Mildred went to the rear of the EMT truck and slipped inside. A few seconds later she was helping the paramedic out of the vehicle. She pointed back the way they'd come. “Run that way and don't stop,” she told him.

Without a word the man took off, high-kicking as if a stickie was biting at his heels.

Jak took the lead as they charged up the steps and into Vee's building. The carnage beyond the foyer hit Ryan like a punch in the face. He had seen a lot of death from a lot of battles, but this wasn't a battle. It was a meat grinder, just like what he'd seen at the police station. The floor in front of them was clogged with body parts. It looked as though someone had shaken up a big bag of heads, arms, legs, torsos and dumped them out. It reeked of burned cordite, blood and guts. There were huge black scorch marks on the walls and ceiling from the gren explosions.

A big operation had been set up here, either to catch Magus or them. Or both. Lots of men, lots of blasters, but the trap had backfired.

Ryan looked at the stairway leading up to Vee's apartment. It was the only place in sight free of detached body parts.

Jak started up. Ryan followed close behind. They were almost to the landing when a door in the hallway below banged back and something not human let out a deep bellow.

Ryan swung the Steyr around as an enforcer stormed down the hall toward the companions waiting at the foot of the stairs. They had their blasters up, a fat lot of good that would do them. He reached for a thermite gren. Even as his fingers closed on the red canister, he knew it was too late. The monster was already on top of them.

Vee stepped forward to greet it, putting her body directly in its path. Ryan couldn't see her face because her back was to him, but her stance said nothing short of death was going to move her aside.

The enforcer was four feet away when she touched off the Desert Eagle. It was three feet away when the gold handgun bucked in her double grip, emitting an earsplitting crack, two feet away when yellow flame a yard long and two feet high leaped from the muzzle. It engulfed the creature's head.

The heavy slug whined off its temple, a glancing impact that barely slowed it, but the flame didn't go away.

Vee shifted to the right and ducked under its arm. The companions fell back to let it pass.

The enforcer's head burned from the neck up, flames streaming out behind as it ran with outstretched arms for the front door. Ryan saw tendrils of fire shooting down its back, then with a whoosh, it was ablaze from head to foot. In a ball of fire that touched the ceiling, it crashed out the doorway and fell down the steps. By the time Ryan reached the doorway for a look, it was on the sidewalk, flames were leaping ten feet in the air and it was sizzling like bacon in a frying pan.

“Way to go, Vee!” Ricky exclaimed in pride and triumph.

“Amazing show of courage, dear girl,” Doc said. “You stood like a matador facing down a charging bull.”

“Did you know it would combust like that?” Mildred asked her.

“No,” Vee said, “I just wanted to get one good lick in before it killed me. Not something I ever want to try again.”

They walked single file up the stairs. The hall looked clear, but they took defensive positions against the opposing walls anyway. In a pale blur, Jak went through the open doorway to Vee's apartment, Python in two hands; everyone else followed in close formation.

The place she had called home was in even worse shape than when they'd left it. Debris was ankle deep and now evenly spread from wall to wall. Fragments of glass from the blown-out windows glittered like ice crystals. And there was blood, too, mixed in with the rubbish. The time unit's door stood half open.

Ryan watched the distress descend over Vee's face. Then it turned to despair. It looked as if she was going to break down in tears. It was a radical transformation from her mood seconds ago. Since he'd never owned a ten-thousandth of the material goods stored in the apartment, it was hard for him to understand her loss.

Doc had a different take on it.

“This,” he told her, “is a preview of the devastation to come. You can't possibly think of staying here, my dear.”

“That is for certain, Vee,” Ricky said. “There is only death here.”

“You and I could have a life in the future, Vee,” Doc told her.

“But you could have a better one with me,” Ricky said defiantly.

Ryan looked at Krysty and frowned. “Am I missing something? What the hell is going on?”

“You are guaranteed clueless, lover.”

“Why does she have to choose either of you?” Mildred asked.

“She does not,” Doc replied, then turned back to Vee. “Just come with us and
live
.”

She smiled at Doc and Ricky. “Everyone dies and nothing lasts, boys,” she said. “If the world is going to end tomorrow, I want to be around see it. It's as simple as that. I'm not leaving.”

Doc's face turned red, and Ricky looked absolutely crushed by the news. Vee had delivered a harsh verdict: she'd rather be incinerated than go on living with either of them. Ryan had to turn his head away for fear he'd break out laughing.

Krysty shot him a glance that said, “You'd better not, mister!”

Vee left them and went into her bedroom. When she came back there were tears in her eyes. She said, “My cats have run away. Not that I suppose it matters, given the big picture.”

Vee held out her arms to Doc and Ricky. “Come say goodbye, my friends. It's time for you to go.”

First Ricky, then Doc gave her a hug and kissed her on the cheek. Ricky knuckled tears from his eyes while the others said their goodbyes.

Before Ryan closed the door to the time unit, Vee leaned in and said, “Thanks for the fun. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.”

To everyone's surprise, she then unfastened her chest holster and handed the Bengal tiger–striped Desert Eagle and the extra mags to him. “Looks like I'm not going to need that baby where I'm going, but it might save your lives at the other end of the time hole. Chill a few of those knobby bastards for me, okay?”

“You can count on it, Vee,” Ryan said as he lowered the weapon and harness to the floor. “ We'll never forget you.”

“I won't forget any of you, either,” she said.

Ryan shut the door and spun the locking wheel. Then he turned to Doc, who was standing slumped at the far end of the unit. “Hit the LD button, Doc,” he said. “I'm hoping it doesn't have a time limit.”

“Honestly, my boy, I would prefer not doing the honors. It would make me feel like I am the one killing her.”