The Dead Slam: A Tale of Benevolent Assasination (42 page)

Jon could feel their straight course upstream begin to arc, as though they were on a very long swing. There was so much happening, but at a dreamlike, hydraulic pace.

“Mind the string, me droogs. Tension, tension, tension!” Captain Banjo’s insane smile was reassuringly determined. His plan appeared to be working and he was riding high. If they caught everything just right, the mine-string would stay on the winch and under control. But none of this equipment was meant for this purpose.

Everyone adjusted their grips, widened their stances and studied the line as it swung off their downstream side. But now that they’d pulled the slack out of the line, it started to pull back. The crew slowly paid out the line like rose petals, keeping just enough tension to maintain control. The current pulled harder and harder on the loose end as the ferry pulled the slack out of the line. If timed perfectly, the ferry would stop engines at the top of this arc, then drift downstream with the mine-string, match speed in the drift, then slowly wind it in on the winch. It all hinged on the moment the tug-of-war began. Ticklish work, indeed.

The line grew taut, and the men leaned into it. Captain Banjo dropped his arms and they cut engines. The ferry lurched and bobbed in the churning current. Suddenly the ferry tipped forward and the string threatened to slip off the winch. Banjo looked terrified.

Jon was reeling. . . then . . .

Everything went pure white and blue and silver. The fog turned to wool plasma, and lightning flashed — cracking its electrical whip.

* * *

O
n the Great Lawn
, the Tesla Coil was on full blast and upstaging the sunrise. Conditions were perfect; the cloudy atmosphere was a dewy conductor. With each blast, ringlets of pure electricity branched into red-hot threads and the sky went from gray gloom to fluorescent glow.

From the roofs of the delivery trucks, dozens of cube-screens projected the Dance-Off at the Meadowlands, which had ignited a gyrating craze here on the lawn. Everyone danced in an erratic circle around the dazzling Tesla Coil. The circle broke spontaneously into several conga lines. The women quickly joined the snaking line, whose beat fit right in with the always danceable Duke’s “Take the A Train” — everyone danced.

Waaaaaaa…waaaa…wa wa wa wa wa…

* * *

T
endrils
of blue and red plasma curled into the clouds and arced across Airship One’s lightning rods. Max held Lily close as a magnetic wave passed through them — pure exhilaration.

Mr. Leun smiled, “Tesla Coil,” and started mumbling a Buddhist prayer.

A
t the Meadowlands
, the dancers went crazy and everything else went to hell. No rules. No game. Just chaos. Hip-shaking, hugging, kissing and borderline offensive displays of personal affection were going on all over the place. They shouted that trombone hook over and over again, until everyone had someone in their arms.

ReplayAJ appeared on a little monitor in the ticket office, and said to Strumbellina and Clichénoir, “That went well, but it wasn’t because of our game. We got more veterans here than we could have ever expected.”

“When result exceeds expectations — that’s a win,” said Clichénoir, fumbling with her headphones. “Time to make the mood fit the mode.”

Todd Williams was way up in the nosebleed section. He could see the parking lot and the Manhattan skyline from there. Groups of volunteers clustered around him, eager to help. “Todd?” came a voice from a laptop sitting on the bleachers. A cube-screen popped out with Levi Tuke’s face. “Where’d they all come from? I’m stunned.”

Todd shrugged.

“From the satellite we can see people crossing the Hudson already. The Verrazano Bridge is packed. Same thing on the Brooklyn and Queensboro. All we can do is go with it. Try to calm things down . . .”

The stadium hiccupped as the music changed to the Count Basie version of “Moonlight Serenade”, a waltz with a little swing. All the arms and legs that had been flailing to “Take the A Train” slowly collapsed in tender caresses. Things calmed instantly.

W
hen the music
changed on the Great Lawn, Anita Boenig draped her arms around Christopher Eddy’s neck, assuming even he could dance to a serenade. And he could. But it only stirred his sense of failure. “Did you search me out so you could gloat?” he said affably.

“Who said I searched you out?”

“Well, I just thought . . . anyway, who put those thumb drives all over the place? That’s a pretty shitty thing to do.”

Anita smiled at him warmly. “Who’s your biggest customer?”

“Ah, I guess that’s American Reserve.”

“That’s a bank, right?”

“Yeah, American Reserve Bank, LLC. In the Cayman Islands.”

“If it’s a bank, then it was Tuke.”

Christopher Eddy paused for a moment, they drifted apart, and he said, pulling her close, “That’s a relief.”

They danced into the swirling crowd, rubbing elbows with the whole digital community that had until now been divided against itself. Segmented. Hackers and hipsters dancing with wage slaves and IT professionals. And the lowly ITs suddenly, for the first time in their lives, realized they were not as despised as they had assumed.

Someone yelled, “There’s an airship up there!”

Airship One nosed out of the clouds and into a descending circle, slowly closing in on the Great Lawn.

The crowd went insane!

T
he blinding light
, concussive noise and raw bolts of lightning had caused the men tending the mine-string on Ferry A to stumble and lose their grip. As the tension lifted, the ferry rocked forward on the wake, and the current pulled the mine-string up and over the winch drum. The string lost all tension and began to unfurl, flailing in murderous loops. A man with a grappling hook tried to grab the mine-string, but it tore the hook from his hand, flinging it far out into the Hudson.

Captain Banjo covered his head with both hands. “Stand off! Stand off!”

The mine-string spiraled violently into larger loops until the last and largest slipped quietly into the drink. A brief series of diminishing rolls and the ferry settled like a bobbing cork, and the half-mile long necklace of mines painted in shamrocks and black hearts set off slowly on its own down the river.

Banjo lowered his hands. “Well, my pasty-faced pirate. We can go back to Weehawken, continue on to Manhattan, or most fun of all, go chasin’ after them mines.”

“We cross, and that’s that,” said Jon, pointing with his chin and closing the subject.

Captain Banjo whirled his cherished instrument over head, the engines churned, and the ferry lurched toward Manhattan. He set it in his lap and plinked around, improvising his sullen mood. He turned to Jon with a sour face. “You fuckin’ tinkers think you’re direct, but maybe you’re just rude.”

Jon stared him down. “You Leprechauns think you’re poetic, but maybe you’re just touchy.”

Captain Banjo crinkled his lips. “I like you, Chalky, you got manners. But we’re freemen by blood. We got no choice. We do what we want and we don’t care what you think. But stupid as we may be, we still know it’s the greed, the greedy fuckin’ Caflers what makes it all go sideways, always has been. If you’re going against them, well, we’re rootin’ for you. We got nothin’ to lose. Not anymore. So! We’ll be taggin’ along. And that’s that!”

“You ever shut up?”

“I will die in mid-sentence. If it kills me.”

Jon bowed his head. “Why not?”

Captain Banjo bowed his head in sincere friendship. “We’re all buried in the same grave, brother.”

A
n exploding blackness woke Fred
, who thought the blinding flash a lingering dream fragment. He rocked forward in his comfortable seat, in total darkness.
Where am I?
He’d fallen asleep just as the Tesla Coil sparked and they’d entered the Weehawken Sub-Hudson Train Tunnel. Flash! Black! Floating nothingness. Clacking wheels. The cabin lights blinked on and Fred could see nothing but wide reflections of the interior in the windows, narrower distortions in their shiny frames, and carnival mirror images wrapped around poles and chrome trim.

A sudden thought of Max brought him to his feet, confused and angry. Sharp glints of light flashed by from the occasional object out in the tunnel, a track marker, a utility shed, or a signal pole. He’d forgotten about his claustrophobia, living high in the mountains. Hand over hand he pulled himself forward. Or was it backward? Those damn seats… Car after car he checked on the veterans, and soon found himself between the passenger cars and the engine on a split landing with exit doors to either side. A steel door with a heavy-duty handle barred his way to the engine room.

After bouncing a few minutes, he opened the left-side door and stuck his head halfway out — his stomach insisted — and watched the oncoming depths swallow everything. An oily black film stinking of creosote and urine sent torrents of revolting stench across his face. He felt better immediately. He could tell they were making a soft turn. In the distance he spotted a smudged but still glittery red barrier on huge wooden pylons announcing the end of the line in iridescent white.

Adrenaline and paranoia divided Fred’s attention.
Max is up there somewhere.
A movie flickered in his head of his boy slugging it out with ten maniacs swinging nail sticks . . .
Stop, stop, stop! Do something. Move. Move.
He opened the door to the passenger car and began to ready the men. Suddenly, the door to the engine room opened behind him.

Everyone stopped to look.

The sharp-dressed Conductor filled the doorway, majestically raising a microphone on a spirally cord to his lips, and said in a velvet baritone, “Pennsylvania Station! New York City! Seventh Avenue, Madison Square Garden.”

Fred smiled approvingly and tipped an imaginary hat.

The Conductor returned the gesture, and asked, “Know where you’re going?”

Fred had assumed they’d simply get off the train and head over to the UN, but he now realized just how big a deal this was. “I never thought we’d get all this way, I guess.”

The Conductor waved him closer with two wiggling fingers next to his ear. “I ain’t been here for years, so I can’t say nothin’ for sure, but there used to be a pedestrian tunnel in the middle of this platform. Go down that tunnel. When you get to where that tunnel intersects with a bunch of other tunnels, look for the signs that say Seventh Avenue, or Thirty-fourth Street. That’s your exit. Seventh Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street. The other tunnels, the stairs and passageways lead to other platforms, not the street. The only way out is at Seventh Ave or Thirty-fourth Street. Follow the signs.”

Fred looked unsure.

“Sounds tricky, but it ain’t. Just follow the Seventh Avenue or Thirty-fourth Street signs.”

Fred made a brave face.

The Conductor looked around and made a disapproving face. “This used to be the most beautiful train station in the world. Pennsylvania Station. I seen pictures. They tore it down to put up Madison Square Garden. Man! Madison Square is fifteen blocks away. Office-tower on top — ugly as a bunion. Made the train part of this train station into a desert of soulless cinderblock tunnels. Sad, really sad. Turned travel from a thing of beauty into pure drudgery.”

As the train slowed to a stop, Fred could hear the men stacking up at the exit doors behind him. He nodded to the Conductor and pressed his way out, ready to fight. But there was no one there, not a soul.
Where are the legendary private militias?
Fred crept quietly down the platform, saw the pedestrian tunnel entrance, and all eleven hundred and twenty-three of them headed in, retching in chorus. “What’s that smell?”

What little light fell into the tunnel clipped off about ten feet in, so the first men to find the surprise had to feel for it. “Holy shit,” one of them yelled, “It’s stuffed solid with garbage. Rotting garbage!”

The Conductor pushed to the front and aimed a long black flashlight at the wall of garbage before them. “This a development!” For a full minute, everyone stood staring at the tightly packed wall of trash plugging the constipated tunnel.

Fred asked hopefully, “Is there another way out of here?”

The Conductor opened his eyes as wide as cue-balls, and declared, “No! Hell no.” He pointed down the track. “That way goes back to Weehawken. I have no idea where all these other tunnels go. You be walking around in here for years, come up in Cleveland.” He shook his head despairingly and offered Fred the flashlight. “You in a world of shit, brother-man.”

Fred pointed the light at the garbage.

“I don’t know how long them batteries gonna last.”

A surge of pushing and shoving knocked everyone back. “What the fuck! Let’s do this!” yelled someone, egging the men on with a mad passion, and with nothing but their hands they began scooping out the garbage, burrowing in like human centipedes, singing, “Let’s do it and do it and do it. Let’s do it and do it and do it . . .” a boot camp work detail double-time all the veterans knew.

As the garbage moved out of the tunnel it became apparent that it had to go somewhere, and someone yelled, “Put it on the train.”

“My ass!” barked the Conductor. “No garbage on my train!” He ran to the engine and the train quickly retreated backward, or was it forward? toward Weehawken.

“That’s even better,” said Fred. “All the room we need, right there. Stack it on the tracks, boys.” He didn’t know how far it was to the surface, or if there was room in the tunnel to put all this garbage. But that didn’t matter. They were burrowing through, dragging the garbage behind them and dumping it in the tunnel, and it didn’t look like anything was going to stop them.

Many hands make light work, but nothing could fix the smell. Decaying, moldy, fecund food rot mixed with sickeningly sweet industrial fragrances leaking from household cleaner containers. The men spent half their time heaving and gagging and shuddering in horror. Within the dense pack of rot, invisible but squeaky, creepy claws scratched and scurried. After an hour’s digging, the garbage became more loosely packed, but it smelled just the same. A man stumbled over something sticking out of the floor. Fred turned the flashlight on — it was less disgusting to dig in the dark — and spotted a concrete step. They cleared the step, then the next one, and soon they were going up.

“This might be where the intersection is,” shouted Fred. The men dug more vigorously, encouraged by this small victory, and quickly found turnstiles, utility doors and other tunnels and stairs. “Don’t go down any tunnels until we find the sign for Seventh Avenue,” said Fred. “Dig all the way up to the ceiling. That’s where the signs are.” The Conductor had described these tunnels perfectly: ‘soulless cinderblock passages’, no more human than the ones the rats made.

In the ceiling, a cluster of enameled signs in no-nonsense black and white were unearthed: LIRR TICKETS, said one, SUBWAY 1 2 3 (each number inside a red circle) A B C (in blue circles). TRACK 13 – 14, said a smaller one. None said 7th Ave., or 34th Street. Fred suffered a moment of debilitating indecision before pointing the flashlight to his left. “Go that way,” he said.

They dug for only a few minutes before someone shouted, “Here’s the escalators.” They cleared a bank of escalators, six wide. “This gotta go to the lobby,” shouted several men.

The Conductor hadn’t mentioned escalators, but Fred had to make a call. “Up we go, boys.” His heart sank into a puddle of doubt. They could be digging their way to nowhere. The militias might have switched the signs. That’s what he’d do. But the trains came in underground, so they had to go up sometime. It felt right. He hoped it was, because they were digging to beat the band now that they’d become used to the smell.

As they topped the escalators, the men were heartened to find another cluster of signs: AMTRAK NJ TRAINS; HILTON PASSAGE; and MAD SQ GRDN. But no 7th Ave, or 34th Street.

One of the men said, “Let’s go to Madison Square Garden. Gotta be some exits from there.”

Fred couldn’t argue with that, but just as he was about to give the order a skinny man wearing a yellow sleeping bag as a coat stepped up and said in a grating New York accent, “You don’t wanna go dat way. We was goin’ along fine. Da street’s right dair.” He pointed into the wall of garbage. “Right dair!”

The mere possibility of getting out drove the men to a final frenzy. In a minute the big red EXIT sign appeared overhead, and then the 7th Ave sign, then the 34th Street sign.

In seconds, they burst out onto the 7th Avenue sidewalk.

Sleeping Bag Man pointed up 7th Avenue and said to Fred, “That Conductor didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground.”

“But he looked good!” said Fred.

The smelly horde quickly assembled on the sidewalk, stunned by what they saw. Every inch of 7th Avenue was crammed bumper to bumper with the city’s former fleet of metro-buses, and each one appeared to be occupied. All of the buses’ tires were flat, and most had some kind of chimney protruding through the roof and laundry hanging on lines stretched from mirror to mirror. An old woman stepped from the nearest bus, #10 Battery Park, and called Fred to her side. She recoiled, pinched her nose, and said, “We’ve been waiting for you.”

Fred looked surprised. “How’d you know we were coming?”

She shook her head, and said bitterly, “What took you so long?”

* * *

C
amille paced back
and forth outside MacIan’s closed door, peeking in every two minutes. A small but insistent medical team had nudged her out, around an hour ago. She was about to make a fuss, when she heard clapping. That was it. She shoved her way in and made it to MacIan’s side. He was awake, but looked dazed. Camille brushed a snarl of hair from his face and stared into his eyes. He didn’t seem to know what was happening, but the goofy smile he gave her told her what she needed to know. Her courage soared.

He was surprisingly spry under a web of braces and bandages as they lifted him into a wheelchair. Camille shooed the aides away and pushed him into the hallway. She stumbled when MacIan grabbed a tire and the chair screeched to a twisting halt.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said, tilting his head back toward his room.

Camille wheeled him back in, shut the door, and pressed her back against it. “There’s a big deal going on. You’re the guest of honor.”

MacIan pointed to a monitor filled with split screens displaying the ‘big deal’. “They don’t need me. I certainly don’t need them.”

“And what about me?”

His eyes sharpened mischievously. “Here’s the thing. I don’t want to die anymore. I thought I wouldn’t mind, but you made me change my mind.” He pushed bandaged fingers through his hair. “And I damn sure ain’t sharing you with anybody. Not now that I got you here. Why would I do that?”

Her whole skeleton trembled. No one had ever said anything like that to her.

“All this Tuke stuff. It made me realize something. If we’re able to create hell on earth, why not create a heaven on earth? Mine begins with you.”

Camille’s heart burst open. It had arrived . . . Love’s gift.

* * *

T
uke roamed
the amphitheater going from team to team. Nine in all, separated only by task but working toward the same goal. At this moment, they were reconfiguring the largest computer networks on the planet into one gigantic bot-net. Tuke urged them all on, but was mostly focused on the team collecting passwords, especially the kind that change every few seconds. The Church used ones like that. But they wouldn’t need them after Tuke shut the digital universe down, then turned it back on again.

A global reboot. Default to original factory settings.