End Day (5 page)

The leggy redhead raised an eyebrow at the word
we
, her expression undisguisedly suspicious and hostile, but the Latino kid with vomit on his shirt and the old man beamed at her. They all seemed taken aback at the apartment's furnishings.

The fedora-and-glasses guy pointed at the calendar on the kitchen wall. “Wow, that's an old one,” he said.

Veronica thought the remark was odd since it was the current
Sports Illustrated
Swimsuit Edition, and the model in question—blonde, tanned, microbikini, zero body fat, draped over the stern of a vintage speedboat—was all of twenty.

“Don't put your eyes out staring,” the black woman said, giving him a hard shove from behind.

Taking them through to the living room, Veronica opened the front door, which led up to the street.

Eyepatch put a hand on her shoulder and stopped her from taking point. “This is as far as you go, lady,” he said. “Trust me, you have no idea what you're getting yourself into.”

He held up a red canister. She recognized it at once from her extensive research. Thermite. Four-to five-second delay fuse. Undo safety clip, pull pin, release safety lever. Throwing range, twenty-five meters.

“Let's clear a path, Jak,” Eyepatch said to the albino. “Right through the windows, into their laps.”

The albino pulled out his own thermite grenade. Veronica thought that the canister's color was a disturbingly close match to his eyes.

They pushed past her and climbed to the top of the short flight of steps. The others hung back, just below the level of the street. Safety levers plinked off. The two men chucked hissing grenades.

Eyepatch and the albino didn't appear ready for what happened next—because they didn't duck.

Massive overlapping explosions rocked the ground, sending them flying backward, arms and legs flailing. As they crashed down on top of their equally astonished friends, the concussion blast emptied window frames up and down the street. A wave of blistering heat washed over the stairwell, then car alarms a block away started wailing.

“Dark night,” the man in the fedora said as he regained his feet. “What was in those wags?”

“Let's do this before they recover,” Eyepatch said, unslinging his Steyr Scout. Then he scrambled back up the steps, with the others close behind.

Despite the warning for her to stay put, Veronica brought up the rear, Eagle at the ready. The pall of greasy black smoke that hung over the sidewalk made it hard to breathe. Inside the towering, twin fireballs at the curb, there was nothing left but twisted car frames and axles. The spindly sidewalk trees were burning furiously, as if they'd been doused with gasoline, and the cars fore and aft of the thermite strikes were on fire, too. Monsters in purple hoodies had given up trying to jumpstart a ride. They lumbered across the street and disappeared behind the parked cars. She followed the strangers as they took cover away from the heat and smoke, next to a pair of cars farther up the block. As she ducked beside the rear passenger door, autofire rattled at them from the opposite sidewalk. The driver side of the sedan absorbed a torrent of bullets. The left-hand tires both blew out, glass shattered and the car quivered on its suspension. Just above her head, slugs zipped through the front compartment and sparked on the concrete steps behind them.

She had gone through live-fire drills in a Georgia backwoods training camp. This was no drill; these shooters weren't trying to miss. No way could she get off a shot from her position without putting her head in the ten-ring.

Then Eyepatch, the Latino kid, the black woman and the redhead jumped up from the ends of vehicles and returned fire.

The albino was already in motion, scampering like a white spider between car bumpers. With an underhanded, bowling-ball pitch, he skipped a sputtering red can across the street and under the car the shooters were firing from behind. Then he dived back over the front hood amid a flurry of bullets. He landed with a shoulder roll and came up crouched on the balls of his feet, grinning madly.

An instant later a tremendous boom shook the street. The jolt dropped Veronica hard onto both knees. As she caught herself, she thought she saw a shadowy blur of car door and hood sailing high overhead, then a wave of withering heat made her whimper.

Grenades of that type didn't explode, she knew. The car's gas tank hadn't exploded, either. Not enough time had elapsed for the heat to reach combustion point. The monsters themselves had exploded, like they had five pounds of short-fused C-4 stuffed up their butts.

She peered over the windowsill and saw the surviving monsters break cover and take off down the sidewalk in the direction of Washington Square Park. Their blocky heads and wide shoulders bobbed over the tops of the cars. The monster in front held the one she'd thought was Bob Dylan, carrying the form as if it were a small child—or a ventriloquist's dummy—legs bouncing up and down at the knees.

When the strangers popped up from behind cover, so did she. Taking stable holds against the vehicles and trees, they all opened fire at once. Eyepatch worked the Steyr's bolt like a machine, punching out shot after scope-aimed shot. She could see his bullets striking the backs and heads of the retreating monsters, plucking at the fabric, the impacts staggering them as they ran.

Veronica knew her ballistics. For some reason, what should have been certain kill shots with 7.62 mm NATO rounds wasn't.

She tracked the moving targets over the sights of the Eagle but held fire—without a clear shot, no way was she going to send .44 Magnum slugs sailing down her own street.

The opposition seemed to have a destination in mind.

As they disappeared around the corner, Veronica's new friends leaped from between the cars to give pursuit. Eyepatch waved for her to stay put.

“No, lover,” said the redhead, a strange glint in her eyes, “let her come along if she wants to.”

Again bringing up the rear, Veronica holstered the Eagle, as it was awkward and heavy to carry in hand while running.

The monsters crossed West Fourth Street against the light, bringing the afternoon traffic to a screeching, horn-honking halt. They took off along the wide sidewalk that bordered the south side of Washington Square Park, scattering pedestrians and sending them fleeing into the trees. The panicked screams brought a pair of horse-mounted cops onto the sidewalk. As they drew sidearms on the approaching purple-hooded crew, their steeds suddenly spooked, reared and, with minds of their own, shot off back into the park.

Farther ahead at the corner, a helmeted motorcycle cop jumped the curb and, with the bike's siren wailing, cut off the monsters' path. He drew and rapid-fired his service automatic pistol, but it didn't slow the charge. The monsters swept over him. Then, like a CG movie stunt, something that shouldn't have been possible in real life, both Harley and rider were tossed forty feet in the air and came crashing down on the stopped traffic.

The motorcycle's siren abruptly cut off on impact, but more were coming from all directions and getting louder by the second. The police response would be the Emergency Service Unit—ESU—NYC's version of SWAT. That was not a good thing. Veronica wanted to yell a warning to the others that armed civilians would be shot first and asked questions afterward, but couldn't because she was struggling to breathe and keep up the headlong pace. Though Eyepatch and the rest were running hard, they kept looking around. They seemed disturbed, even apprehensive about the surroundings, the people, the traffic, the city skyline.

A half block ahead of them, the monsters poured down the steps to the West Fourth Street subway entrance. As they closed in on it, the rattle of rapid gunfire rolled up from belowground. It sounded like pistols, not AKs.

They paused at the edge of the stairs to catch their breaths.

“Why are they running from us?” the Latino kid said. “They're stronger, even without blasters. Why they not stand and fight?”

No one answered him.

Hat-and-glasses guy was staring up at the tall, wall-to-wall buildings, as if he'd never seen the like before.

“Dark night! This isn't Deathlands,” he gasped. “Where in nukin' hell are we?” To Veronica it looked as if he was on the verge of hyperventilating.

The black woman put a hand on his back and tried to calm him. “We're in New York, J.B.”

Eyepatch didn't seem to notice his friend's distress. “We've been here before,” he said. His attention was focused on the traffic on the street beside them; he seemed to be looking from one license plate to another.

“What year is this?” he asked Veronica.

In the context of what had already happened, the question didn't seem all that strange. “It's 2001,” she said.

“By the Three Kennedys,” the old man groaned, “we have jumped back in time.”

Veronica blinked at him in disbelief. “You're from the future, then?” she asked dubiously. As she uttered those ridiculous words, an uncharitable thought popped into her mind: Wow, it must really suck.

Eyepatch didn't confirm or deny their origins. Instead he asked another question. “What month and day is it?”

“It's January 19.” A thoroughly assimilated New Yorker, she added sarcastically, “Why? Do you people have somewhere more important to be?”

“Anyplace but here and now would be just fine,” Eyepatch said. “The world ends at noon tomorrow.”

Chapter Three

When the bundle of meat and metal in its arms shrilled a command, the enforcer cut hard right and started down the stairs that led below street level. Its brethren followed in lockstep. They had been to this strange-tasting, chaotic, crowded place many times in the service of their shambling master. The fact that they had never before missed the designated landing spot, never met opposition on arrival or taken a casualty did not make it uneasy. They were trivial concerns compared to the inconceivable power the master had shown them over and over.

The power to loot the past and change the future.

As it descended, a rush of warm air rolled up the concrete steps, propelled by the pressure of a subway train moving in a tunnel beneath them. The enforcer sampled the gritty wind with its tongue. Mixed in with inanimate molecules of soot, of petrochemical solvents, of greasy, spoiled food and lavatory-cookie perfume was the flavor of living bodies, hearts pumping hot, red blood and skins oozing a watery sweat. The aroma of humanity did not perk its appetite.

It wasn't a predator.

It didn't kill to eat, or kill because it hated; it killed because it could.

At the bottom of the stairway, subway riders starting up for the street took one look at the mass of hooded, menacing figures coming toward them, spun 180 degrees and fled in the opposite direction, scattering across the concrete concourse.

The wide entrance floor was bisected by a barrier of stainless-steel turnstiles and a security kiosk. On previous visits they had paid to ride, according to local custom; this time, however, the master was in a rush and waved for them to hurry ahead. The brethren started hopping the turnstiles, which brought a pair of uniformed NYPD Transit Police charging out of the kiosk to intercept them. Obviously intimidated by the size and number of the fare cheaters, they drew their 9 mm sidearms.

“Stop!” one of them shouted over the sights of his handgun.

The black communication device on his hip chirped and crackled. A disembodied voice announced, “Ten-double-zero, officer down,” then gave a description of multiple, identically dressed suspects fleeing the scene on foot and their last known direction of travel.

With the master cradled in its arms, the enforcer easily jumped the turnstile's spokes.

“Stop or we'll fire!” the policeman repeated, eyes wide as he and his partner, pistols held in two-handed grips, closed distance.

From ten feet away the two cops started shooting. Instinctively, the enforcer shielded the master from the flurry of bullets with its own body. The hits to its torso and back barely registered as such—its sheer mass absorbed the shock of the impacts; its armored endoskeleton deflected the projectiles from vital organs. It did feel the hits to the side of its head, though; as its skull was violently jarred again and again, bright white lights flashed behind its eyes.

Bullets ricocheted off it in a wide arc, spraying across the concourse, with nothing to stop their flight but human flesh and bone. A male in an olive parka and watch cap was hit from behind; his knees buckled. An elderly female took a slug in the chest, sagged and toppled, spilling the contents of her shopping bags onto the concrete. Other bystanders dropped at random, as if their strings had been cut. People began screaming. The few who realized what was happening pressed their faces to the floor.

One of the cops circled to the front—from his aimpoint, trying to line up a head shot on the master. Before he could fire, the enforcer shifted the precious deadweight to its left arm and hopped forward with both feet. Toe to toe with the policeman, it struck with its free hand—a precise blow, perfectly timed, with more than three hundred pounds of mass behind it. The amber thumb hook drove into the corner of the man's left eye socket, through and under the bridge of his nose and out the opposite socket. For an instant they were frozen, the impaler and the impaled, then the handgun slipped from the cop's fingers and clattered on the concrete. With a brisk snap of its wrist, the enforcer wrenched off the face, from forehead to upper jaw, like a cheap plastic lid, leaving behind a yawning red crater and exposed tongue. A gargling noise burst from the officer's throat as he collapsed, then blood began to fountain.

The other cop staggered in retreat, the slide on his empty pistol locked back. Behind him, one of the brethren ripped a turnstile from its mounting and with a downward, single-handed blow, drove one of the fat, stainless spokes through the crown of his head. The massive surge of pressure inside the skull made both eyes pop out of their sockets, but the policeman never felt it. He was already dead.

As master and disciples advanced toward the platform entrances, the screams and shouts behind them grew louder and louder. Humanity was waking up. Commuters in winter coats and hats rushing up from the trains parted like a school of panicked baitfish. While some darted for safety, others flattened themselves against the walls or fell helplessly to their knees. Those who froze in their tracks midconcourse were either bowled over and trampled or grabbed, broken and flung out of the way.

The half man/half machine in the enforcer's arms shuddered and made a clanking, grinding noise—like a wag throwing a tie-rod.

The master was laughing.

Then the grating, steel-scraping-on-steel voice said, “Faster! Hurry!”

They trooped down more flights of stairs, smashing and hurling human obstacles out of their path. When they stepped onto the middle of the subway platform, the nearest waiting commuters hurried for the other exits. On the opposite platform, a crowd stared at them uneasily.

From down the tunnel to the right came a rush of warm wind, signaling the approach of a train—one going in the opposite direction.

“Cross the tracks!” the half man/half machine shouted at them. “Now! Run!”

The enforcer carrying the master didn't expect an explanation. That it understood the reasons for an action wasn't required. Its brain was no match for the master's, even without its comp enhancement. The only thing required was that it did as it was told. With the other brethren, it jumped down from the platform onto the soot and grease-blackened rail bed.

“Watch out for the electrified rail,” the master reminded it.

As the enforcer stepped over the high-voltage track, between the ceiling supports, the wind gusted harder. It tasted ozone and rat shit in the steady breeze, and when it looked down the dark tunnel it saw the headlight of the train bearing down on them.

The humans on the platform were yelling and waving for them to go back. When they saw the hooded, assault-rifle-armed heavyweights were going to make it safely across, they turned and raced for the exits.

The brethren jumped up onto another deserted platform.

Seconds later the long, low train squeaked to a stop beside them. The doors to all the cars slid open and commuters flowed onto the platform, moving quickly past the enforcers, looks of astonishment on their faces. When the brethren entered the middle door of a car, they forced a mad exodus of riders out either end. Commuters pushed and shoved to escape.

“Put me down,” the master said.

The enforcer obeyed at once, carefully lowering the half man/half machine to the floor of the car. As it did so, there was a rumbling sound and a vibration beneath them, then more shrill squeaking as a train going the other way came to a stop at the opposite platform.

Through the speakers overhead, an automated voice warned travelers that their car doors were about to close.

“Don't look in the other train!” the master screeched as all the doors whooshed shut.

Another command without explanation.

But too late this time. It had already turned its head. The train opposite was only a few feet away; plates of grease-smeared window glass faced each other across the narrow gap. It blinked its eyes and immediately turned back.

With a stomach-wrenching lurch, they accelerated away from the station.

The two trains had been side by side for only a second or two, but the afterimage of what it had seen through the hazy windows, in the strangely flickering, interior lights was burned into its mind.

Standing in the aisle of the opposing train, it had seen itself, the master and the others.

Even the two brethren who had fallen.