Hammerhead Resurrection (37 page)

“Suit-Con,” Stacy whispered, “infrared off.”

The tunnel fell into darkness. A rectangle of electric light now illuminated the doorframe.

Moving in the darkness with quiet steps, she
slid her hand along the tile wall. Nearing the door, she listened. Voices murmured. No deep resonation or clicks. One was high pitched, nasal. The other deep, but not alien. They might be able to lead her out of the tunnel. It was a risk, but her gut told her to take it, so she turned the door knob and shoved the door open.

The light extinguished. She heard shuffling followed by the slip-clack of a gun-slide.

“I’m Commander Stacy Zack with U.S. Navy Special Warfare. I’m here to help.”

“Show yourself.”

With a loaded weapon trained on me? Good luck.

“Suit-Con,” she whispered to her suit, “Infrared on.” The world came back to her glowing green. She leaned around the door frame. The room was a storage area of some kind with shelving units along the walls. Two men in jumpsuits hunkered at the back beside a cluttered desk. The larger aimed a shotgun on the doorway. Moving quietly on the balls of her feet, Stacy stepped through the doorway and to the right, out of the line of fire.

“Gentlemen, I need you to remain calm.”

As she spoke, the larger man’s eyes went wider, searching the darkness.

She moved further right, now up against the shelving.

The smaller man flicked on the light at the same time the larger man fired the shotgun blindly right where Stacy had been standing. While her suit had muffled the blast, she knew their ears would be ringing.

This is not how I’d hoped this would go down.

The electric light overwhelmed the infrared and her suit automatically cut out the display. She stood seven feet or so from the men, both unwashed and unshaven with eyes narrowing against the bright light. They wore stained, orange jumpsuits with black letters stencil-sprayed across the chest, “Property of Allegany Co.”

Prisoners.

Stacy wanted to leave, but before she could, she had to deal with the shotgun. Even an errant shot in the right direction of a sound could severely injure her if not cut her in half. She cursed herself silently for having come in the room.

The man lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, finger on the trigger. He tracked the barrel left and right, sweeping it momentarily across Stacy’s chest.

When the barrel tracked away from her, she leapt forward, slapping the gun to the side. It went off with a concussion that left even her ears ringing. She whipped her elbow over his shoulder and caught the side of his neck with a heavy thump. His eyes went vague as he dropped. She snatched the gun’s receiver and pulled it from his hands as he fell. Foot-long sections of the gun vanished as the suit attempted to cloak it, but it was too long to fully vanish.

The man had fallen to his knees, and to assure he wouldn’t lunge for her, she kicked him in the chest, knocking him backward. She threw the half visible shotgun out the door. It clattered to the tracks in the darkness.

The smaller man was staring directly at her so she moved sideways with cautious steps out of his sightline. The larger man groaned and rolled over, holding his neck.

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice sounding vague after being nearly knocked unconscious.

“I don’t want trouble,” Stacy said. “I need to know how to get out of here, fast.”

“Uncloak yourself and I’ll tell you.”

Stacey laughed. “Tell me, or I’ll kill you and have your friend tell me.”

“Then get the hell out of here. This is the Broadway tunnel. You got stations in ten blocks either way.”

“Which is closer?” But in that moment Stacy had underestimated the big man. He lunged forward, not at her, but for the doorway. He slammed the door shut with an echoing bang of metal and turned to generally where she stood. At his full height he was over six feet tall and well over two-hundred pounds.

“I know you’re still in here, and I can tell by your voice you’re a sweet little girl.” A wicked smile drew across his face. “We’re gonna have ourselves a little
talk
.”

Stacy said, “So that’s what it comes to. We make all this progress for thousands of years and in a few days and a few missed meals this is what we fall to?”

“Oh not
we,
honey,” the big man said, rubbing his hands together, “I never been any good. We ain’t all raised with silver spoons in our mouths.”

Stacy was about to make her move on the man, when something in the back of her mind came forward. “Where did you come from?”

“Allegany County Pri—”

“I can see that. How did you get here?”

“The eaters brought us.”

“Eaters.”

“Well, that’s what they doin’ ain’t they?”

“I suppose.”

“It’s true. So when they got us out of the prison and moved us all around, they cut up the old ones and burned ‘em. Meat must be no good. No matter, those old guys have nothin’ but bullshit stories anyway. They spent their whole lives behind bars and then think they have somethin’ to tell me.” The man laughed, “Those spider things can’t have me though, and not Shay here neither.”

Stacy looked to the smaller man Shay, who touched his forehead in a flippant salute. He smiled showing darkly yellowed teeth.

The larger man continued, “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be some freak’s meal. At night Shay and me dug under the fence. We know what to do. Spread the dirt out across the yard, so there’s no evidence, dig it in between bushes and fill it with branches. We worked slow and took turns. If the guards looked too close, one of us would cause a distraction, pick a fight or somethin’. You know. It only took us a week. Stupid fuckers are useless guards.”

“Is the hole still there?”

“Yeah… why?”

Stacy looked at her HUD. She had thirty minutes before the singularity went off.

I only want to get one out.

“No matter though,” Shay said behind her. He smiled. “It’s the end of the world, and you sound pretty.”

“Are you sure?” Stacy asked.

Shay hesitated at the question.

“Oh we’re sure,” came the larger one’s response. “We’re absolutely sure. Now I’m gonna go ahead and cover the exit while Shay here swings a metal pipe around. IF he hits you and we get our hands on you, then you gonna regret it. Why not just shut that fancy cloaking device off and let us have a look at you?”

Stacy said, “I don’t have time for this.”

Shay took a three-foot pipe from the desk and swung it like a baseball bat. When he stepped forward, Stacy stood right in the strike zone. As he swung it again, Stacy dropped into a pushup position. The pipe whipped over her head.

The big man said, “Looks like you
gonna have to make time.”

Stacy pulled her pistol and trained it between the big man’s eyes. “Last chance to step out of the doorway.”

The pipe whipped the air again.

“Sorry boys,” she said and pulled the trigger. The gun’s grip bucked into her palm as the small silencer reduced the report to a crack, still pronounced in the confined room. A hole appeared between the big man’s eyes as dark material splattered against the door. He tilted forward and slammed face first to the ground, dead.

She asked Shay, “Where’s the tunnel you dug?”

Shay dropped the pipe mid swing. As it clanked to the floor, he said, “I…”

“The tunnel. Save your life Shay, talk quickly. If you lie, I come back and hunt you down. How did you get out of the fence?”

Shay did speak quickly, almost too quickly for Stacy to understand. “There’s a transformer with three bushes around it near the latrine. It’s between the bushes.”

“Where does it come out?”

Shay looked to the door as if he might make a run for it.

Stacy shot the light switch behind him and all fell into darkness.

“Suit-Con,” she said, “infrared.”

“Now Shay, you’re standing in complete darkness and I can see you as clear as day. If you want to live, tell me where it comes out.”

“I don’t know… about ten feet away from the fence there’s a big hole in the street, a big crack where a foundation was. We dug out there. There’s a cab next to it, smashed flat by a street light.”

“North or south of the fence?”

“North… ten feet north.”

Stacy watched Shay’s frightened eyes. Here she had a man compliant in fear, but a few moments ago, he’d been ready to hit her with a pipe and do what he liked. He was a killer and a user. If they succeeded in stopping the Sthenos, the next step would be to save the human race from those like him. If she let him live, if he found someone defenseless, he’d use them just like he’d said he wanted to use her.

“I’m sorry Shay.”

“No, no, please,” he said as if reading her mind. “You need to know how to get out of here, and I can help you do that. The next station is ten blocks away. It’ll take a long time. I can have you on the surface in two minutes.”

“How?”

“Give me your word you won’t kill me, and I’ll tell you.”

Stacy thought for a moment before saying, “Okay. Tell me.”

A look of relief washed over Shay’s face, and he side stepped. Stacy kept her pistol trained on his skull as he moved. He pointed behind him to a metal door that Stacy had taken for a closet. “That’s the exit right there. There’s a ladder up to a manhole cover.”

“Open the door.”

Shay walked over and pulled the door open. It moved readily on oiled hinges and clanked to a stop on the wall. Stacy could see the rungs of a ladder on the far wall.

“That won’t do me any good Shay.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a pile of rubble where I need to go I can’t climb. I have to go back the way I came.”

“The pile they made? No, on the north side, there’s a pathway over it that’s just concrete blocks, you can climb it without making noise. It’s right on 6
th
Avenue. That’s how we got out. It’ll bring you right over to the tunnel we dug.”

Stacy considered her options, go back and have to arc around to the south side of Bryant Park because the subway tracks didn’t go straight to the park. She didn’t have time for that. She’d have to trust a convict’s word.

“Okay Shay, get out of here.”

Shay began to step through the door.

“Not that way. Go into the subway tunnel and walk down the walkway. I’m going to watch you. If you stop, I kill you.”

“H-How far do I have to go?”

“I’d suggest not stopping.”

Shay stepped forward, but crashed into a metal shelf. “I can’t see
nothin’.”

“What would you prefer, walking in pitch dark and turning an ankle or having your skull sprayed all over the subway tracks like your friend?”

“You gave me your—”

“Don’t push me. I’m out of time.”

Shay nodded and began to move toward the outer door with sliding steps, hands out in front of him. As he passed her, she stepped aside. Her boot shifted the pipe Shay had swung at her. His eyes turned toward her. Holding the tip of her pistol a few inches from his skull, she would have killed him if she sensed aggression of any kind, but all she saw was stark fear. He had to kick the big man’s legs out of the way to pull open the door. Leaning out into the tunnel he looked back at her.

“I can’t see
nothin’.”

“Just follow the wall.”

“Which way?”

“Go left, away from where I’m going. If I see you again… you die. Got it?”

He nodded. “Thanks for not killin’ me.”

“My guess is that you’ll be dead soon enough anyway.”

Shay’s eyes, glowing green in the IR light, gave him a soulless look. “Ma’am, you’re probably right.” He walked into the darkness. Stacy moved to the outer door and watched him moving away down the narrow walkway his left hand tracing the wall.

“Keep walking. I’m watching,” she said as she holstered her pistol and went to the doorway at the back of the room. Stepping inside the closet-like space, she looked up. Shay had been truthful. A rebar-rung ladder ran up some thirty feet to the disk of a manhole cover laced with little circles of brilliant-green light. She was not excited about lifting a man hole cover for the noise it would make but had few options.

She climbed the ladder quietly, not wanting to reveal to the convict that she had already stopped watching him. The space smelled of loam and fungus. At the top, keeping a grip with her good, left hand, she shoved on the manhole cover with the top of her head and her right hand, the torn tendon spiking pain into her palm. The cover resisted for a moment, but with a pulse of effort she dislodged it from the sediment around it’s rim, which fell with little clatters into the hole. She lifted the cover. As the shaft filled with sunlight, the suit cut the IR, leaving her in natural daylight.

Balancing the cover on its side, knowing full well what would happen if she dropped it, she shimmied herself butt first onto the street. Coming to her feet, she moved around to the other side of the cover, stuck her fingers through its inner holes, and set it down in its circular depression.