Overture (Earth Song) (20 page)

Lt.
Harper had been a teenager in New Jersey the day the towers came down, and like millions across the nation, he watched on TV as they fell. Then, with his fellow New Yorkers, he drove to the East River and stared at the smoking hole in the NY skyline in numb horror.

Eight
years with the NYPD and he had never heard a general call on the radio. Over the last five years the radio had become increasingly silent as much of the police traffic was handled over cell phones and the police data network. He and about a thousand other officers had all looked up in shock a few minutes ago when the radio suddenly broadcast a general call; "Calling all units in or around the Central Manhattan district. Shots fired, officers down, automatic weapons and explosives are in use. U.S. Army units on the scene in Central Park, North Meadow are under assault by a force of unknown terrorists. All available units are ordered to respond!"

He
had been only ten blocks away, questioning a Korean shopkeeper, victim of a recent robbery. Harper had stared at the radio in his pocket for a second before turning and running for his car. The shopkeeper yelled something in Korean, but Harper was already sliding behind the wheel of his cruiser and pealing away with a squeal of tires.

As
he wove in and out of the traffic, his siren screeching, he responded to the call on his car computer. Although he was still more than five blocks away he could hear the carnage even over his roaring engine and siren. The rattle of gunfire, the intermittent boom of explosions, the screams and cries of panicked people pouring down the streets in the other direction all waited for him. He was forced to slow below twenty miles per hour to avoid the crowd. Soon more sirens joined his, mostly fire trucks and ambulances falling in line toward Central Park. Two blocks from the park the aid vehicles stopped. They would go no farther until the gunfire ceased.

Harper
fell in with two other police cars, and they picked their way around abandoned cars and taxis. Just before they reached Central Park West, a pair of soldiers moved into the street and blocked their way. The three police cruisers emptied onto the street and confronted the soldiers. Harper was the senior officer so he went forward to talk to the men. “Halt,” he was warned, “this is a combat zone.” As if to punctuate the statement, a bullet winged off a car nearby. All five cops instantly crouched down but the soldiers took almost no notice. Gunfire was steady and rapid from inside the park only a block away.

“
It sounds like you need all the help you can get. Let us through, corporal.”

“
No sir, I have my orders.”

“
And we have ours. I’m a police lieutenant and you are a corporal. I outrank you. They need help in there and you are standing in the way.”

“
You’re not an army lieutenant.”

“
And that matters how? Your own lieutenant, how many years’ service does he have?”

“
He’s fresh out of West Point, about a year older than I am.”

“
Well, I’ve been fighting the good fight on these streets for over eight years. Now get the hell out of the way!” The soldier thought about it for a second. Then a group of three soldiers came staggering down the road from the park. All of them had multiple gunshot wounds and could barely walk. “Ambulances are one block back that way,” Harper told them and sent the youngest of the five patrolmen to help the injured back to the aid crews.

The
corporal looked at Harper again and said, “Sorry I delayed you, sir. Go right ahead.”

“
Good call. Keep your eyes open.” Harper took just enough time to pop his trunk and grab his shotgun, flack vest, and ammo bag while the others cops did the same. He wished one of them had been part of a tactical unit. It would have been nice to have an automatic weapon. He abandoned any thought of relieving the soldiers of their M-4 rifles. He wasn’t qualified to use one and didn’t want to leave the young men unarmed anyway. They left their cars in the street, no cars would be coming any farther, and set off at a jog toward the park. As they crossed the last street, they found a war zone.

The
small town of temporary buildings was under siege from all directions. Gunfire roared from street level, from moving and parked vehicles, and even from the buildings overlooking the park. The soldiers fought from behind concrete barricades, pouring out withering fire. But it was the dozens of individual snipers far up the surrounding skyscrapers or hidden in the park foliage that were doing the real damage. In the few seconds they took to get the feel of the situation Harper saw two men go down. “This is fucking insane!” he yelled over the weapons fire.

“
Where did all these terrorists come from?” asked one of the other cops. An instant later a bullet caught him in the shoulder and sent him spinning to the ground.

“
Take cover!” Harper ordered, dragging the wounded man behind an abandoned FedEx delivery truck pockmarked with dozens of bullet holes.

“
Surrender and you may leave,” yelled a voice behind them. Harper turned to see three men of different ages, all wearing street clothes. If you saw them together in a crowd you wouldn't look twice, but these three were all pointing guns.

“
NYPD! Place your guns on the ground! You’re under arrest!” demanded one of the men with Harper, a sergeant with nearly as many years as he had. The sergeant already had his sidearm out and was raising it to cover the suspects when one of them shot him through the head at point-blank range. There was no warning, no justification, no hesitation. One second the sergeant was kneeling there, and the next he was dead.

“
Freeze, drop the gu-” another of the men went down as Harper and the last man made their move.

These
people weren’t going to play by the rules. They had just murdered two police officers in cold blood. Harper brought up his shotgun and fired from the hip. The Remington 870P 12-gauge unleashed its double 00 buckshot, nearly cutting the first man in two. The patrolman next to him fired his Glock at least five times into one of the other murderers, killing him instantly. The last attacker tried to shoot Harper and missed him by a wide margin. Harper racked the shotgun’s pump and shot the man in the stomach, doubling him up and dropping him to the ground. Harper stepped forward and covered the groaning man with the shotgun, his mind spinning in shock from the brutal exchange. “Don’t move!”

“
We will take it back!” the man gurgled and spit blood.

“
Take what back?” Harper gestured and the patrolman stepped forward to cuff the man.

“
The Portal of the Avatar! You cannot keep it from the faithful! You will all die!” The patrolman moved in to secure him, kicking the man’s pistol away. But he didn't think to search the assailant. He was lying there in agony, his intestines spilling out on the sidewalk and blood everywhere. As the patrolman bent to cuff him, the man produced a butcher knife and stabbed him in the neck. The patrolman staggered back, blood spraying from his neck and the perp struggled to his feet. He had to use a hand to hold his intestines in. He stumbled for another target for his fanatical rage, Harper shook his head in disbelief and stepped back to avoid the clumsy lunge.

“
You must die so that the Avatars may return; it is written in the Bible!” He stumbled toward Harper, narrowly missing him. Harper swallowed and pulled the trigger, blowing the man’s head into bloody pieces.

“
God damn you!” Harper cried, dropping to his knees to help the stabbed patrolman. What could he do? Harper tried to stem the flow of blood, but it was already beginning to slow. The sidewalk looked like a butcher shop. He smashed his fist against the blood-splattered concrete in rage. Then he shouldered the shotgun and headed into the park. The only thing that kept him going was his duty.

Osgood had just stepped from the lunch wagon when the first shots were fired. He ignored it. This was New York City; gunfire was not an unusual occurrence. Then there were even more shots, followed by automatic weapons fire. With a growing sense of dread he knew something was deathly wrong. The alarm sounded and the soldiers who until now had been nearly invisible began appearing out of the woodwork.

“
Someone is attacking the compound. Get into a secure area!” Mark Volant had snarled as he raced by, his portly frame running toward the violence like a moth to a flame. Osgood didn’t need any more encouragement and did as he was told. He ran toward one of four squat, concrete domes that had been built to protect against a catastrophe during testing of the alien Portal. As he ran, an occasional bullet bounced off the structures around him, urging him to a pace he didn’t know he was capable of.

He
was relieved to see almost all of his scientific staff crowded into the armored building, but less thrilled to see that many of them still carried clipboards and instruments. “What were you doing when it started?” he asked the most senior technician present.

“
We had a particle emitter up and running to see what kind of bounce we would get.”

“
Did you get it shut down?”

“
No, a couple grunts came through and chased us out.”

Osgood
scowled. That particle emitter was a dangerous piece of equipment with few safeties. It was designed to be closely monitored while in operation. Left unattended it could overheat, increase its power output dramatically or even explode. Who could say how the Portal would react to an uncontrolled particle bombardment?

“
We need to get over there and shut that thing down,” he told the assembled scientists and technicians. “Who’s coming with me?” He was underwhelmed by the response. “None of you?” They looked at the ground, the walls, each other, anything but Dr. Osgood. “Okay, we’ll do it the hard way. You, you, and you,” he said, pointing out three able-bodied men at random. They all looked shocked, though none of them complained out loud. They had been taking orders from him for weeks now. A bullet bounced off the reinforced concrete bunker making the huddled people cry out in fear.

“
Come on,” Osgood gestured and the three men reluctantly moved to followed him.

Outside
the safety of the dome, the sounds of fighting were overwhelming. Gunfire was everywhere, as well as yelling soldiers and smoke. To Osgood it was evident that the fight was not going well.

A long rattle of gunfire nearby sent them diving for cover as bullets went ricocheting around the area between buildings. “Keep down,” he ordered as the four of them covered the last ten yards crawling on their hands and knees. More bullets bounced around as they scrambled to the door of the Portal dome and then inside.

The
heavy dome provided some safety at least. Osgood got up off his aching knees and ran across to the particle emitter to check its status. “Damn thing is increasing the power by itself,” he cursed and shook his head. The power settings were up by almost two hundred percent. The side of the pearly white Portal dais had a slight purple tint to it where the particle stream was impacting. He shuddered to think of how much radiation the Portal might be giving off as it resisted this onslaught.

“
Get this thing shut down!” he told the others. There was a clipboard hanging from the controls and he began reading off the checklist. No sooner had they started than all the lights went off. A split second later the ground shook and a thunderous explosion reverberated through the ground.

“
I think that was the main power cell,” one of the other men said in the darkened room. Osgood nodded his head and the red emergency lights came on. Light still came in through the main entrance so they could see well enough.

“
Any damage to the instruments is done,” Osgood said and flipped all the power switches off in one smooth motion. “You men get the rest of the equipment shut down in case the power comes back.” They moved amongst the equipment, shutting them down one by one so they would not overload the emergency power. The work helped them to ignore the sounds of warfare raging outside.

It
was Osgood who noticed that it had gotten quieter. “Maybe it’s finally over?” he said, then asked one of the men to go look.

“
Oh, shit!” he heard and looked back up. A technician was backing toward him, his hands held up in the air. Advancing into the dome were a dozen men and women, many of them wounded and bloody, and all armed.

“
What is the meaning of this?” Osgood demanded. A pair of the men raised weapons and pointed them at him. The scientist felt his blood run cold and his eyes got wide as he realized he was about to die.

“
Sweet Jesus!” one of them yelled, pointing. They all looked up and gasped.

“
We found it!” said another one of them, “It’s the Portal to Heaven!”

“
Who are you, and what do you want?” Osgood asked him again, a little less demanding this time.

“
I am Gabriel, disciple of the Prophet Victor.” Osgood swallowed and felt himself begin to sweat.