Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) (17 page)

Opening her eyes again, she saw they had crossed over the East River. The Empire State was still disintegrating, knocking into the building across the street from it and setting off a chain reaction where one building smashed into another which fell upon another – a hellish giant’s game of dominos. The streets were full of crashed cars, overturned buses, and yellow cabs on fire. Nicole saw people, tiny from her vantage point, running through the streets, seeking some kind of shelter. Several were crushed by the crumbling structures and the large chunks of cement and iron falling from up high. Huge sheets of glass tumbled end over end, finally smashing to the pavement, shooting shards in every direction like lethal missiles. One unlucky woman was neatly sliced in two, from her head to her navel, by a long falling window pane. Instantly, the two halves were beset by horrific monsters, which started to feast upon the woman’s remains, oblivious to the chaos around them.

One of the crumbling buildings drooped to the side, finally resting against a more solid stone skyscraper. It wavered, but remained standing, and the two formed a forty-five-degree triangle with the streets below.

Tom Hemmer shouted, “Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen.”

He veered the helicopter lower, until it was passing just beneath the newly created arch of the two buildings. Bits of glass rained down on the copter for a moment, then it cleared the rubble.

“See that one up there? That’s on Broadway,” Hemmer said.

“The one that’s on fire?” Burns asked, incredulous.

“No, the one next to it.”

“Oh shit!” Nicole screamed, noticing that there was something following them. “We have a bogey behind us.”

Hemmer said, “When did they pick us up? Didn’t see them. Okay, kiddies, you might lose your lunches, but we’re gonna try and lose this creep.”

“Good luck,” she replied. “It’s an F-15. Nice little—”

“I can outfly that old junker,” Hemmer said, and the world dropped out from beneath them all.

The whirlybird plunged suddenly, losing twenty-five feet of altitude, and it started flying in between the extant skyscrapers twenty or thirty feet above street level. The buildings loomed over them, forming a Cyclopean maze, their shadows blocking out most of the sunlight. The F-15 remained up high, above the rooftops, speeding away from them until it was out of sight. Within a few seconds, it reappeared over their heads.

Hemmer steered the helicopter deftly between the buildings, making a left turn, following Broadway north. Zipping through the streets of the midtown shopping district, the trio in the helicopter avoided most of the fires, although Nicole drew in her breath more than a few times. A burst of flame exploded from a fortieth story window. Pieces of glass rained down on them, and burning cloth slid down the front dome of the medical helicopter. Hemmer pulled up, and the copter lurched another fifty feet higher as another jet soared over their heads.

A voice came over their radio, deep and authoritative, “This is the US Army. You have entered restricted air space. Please turn around and fly back to Brooklyn.”

Burns grunted, said, “Hell, they’ve been watching us since before we took off. Probably since you flew over to the hotel, Tommy.”

Hemmer swung the bird into a right turn, heading farther north, moving past Soho.

Nicole glanced down as the helicopter swayed during a turn. One of the Lycanthropes was standing on top of an overturned car, lashing out at a crowd of people running by. It grabbed a woman by her long hair and pulled her off her feet, lifting her throat to its mouth and biting down. All around the scene, people writhed on the street, halfway through the transformation. Others ran screaming, looking for a safe place to hide. A man roared by on a motorcycle, speeding past the scene and disappearing around a corner into a cloud of white smoke from a fire in a series of garbage dumpsters.

The helicopter zoomed up Broadway, passing the Woolworth Building just as the structure was struck by one of the passing F-15s that got a little too close to the parapet. Jet fuel exploded, and a large chunk of the top five floors crumbled toward the sidewalks below. The helicopter swung toward the other side of the street, narrowly missing the enormous mass of concrete and steel rods. The four sidewinder AA missiles loaded onto the F-15 fired upon impact, launching in four different directions. Two hit the ground near the base of the Chrysler Building, detonating and blasting huge holes in the bottom two floors of the construction; several people and cars went airborne, flipping end over end. It tilted toward the building next to it.

A third missile went up into the air and exploded like a fireworks display over the top of St. Peter’s Church. The fourth went straight north up Broadway. Hemmer dropped the helicopter until it was hovering just above the street. An eight-foot-tall beast leapt from its perch on a theater marquee, trying in vain to grab the helicopter out of the sky. The sidewinder sped over the top of the Sikorsky Medical Helicopter. Trailing a plume of smoke, it smashed into the side of the New York City Courthouse, blasting the western side across the park.

“Close one, Tommy,” Burns muttered.

“Yep.”

The helicopter got itself back on track, heading to the middle of the street, passing City Hall Park. Pieces of the courthouse were still falling from the sky.

“Identify yourself,” came the gruff voice over the Sikorsky’s radio. “Identify yourself or we will be forced to shoot you down.”

Burns looked back at Nicole and raised his eyebrows as a new F-15 shot over the tops of the buildings ahead of them.

“Can they do that?” Nicole asked.

“Probably,” Hemmer said. “Just look down. It’s a fucking mess out there. A couple of sidewinders wouldn’t hurt much of anything.”

“Then get us out of here and get the hell back to the hotel,” Burns suggested.

“Aye aye, skipper,” Hemmer said and laughed.

He flew north, but taking a winding road, turning left then right, then left again. He explained that this maneuvering would help shake their tail.

“Those F-15s are damned fast,” he said. “They can fly over, but there’s no way they could take these curves like this old bird. They’d fly straight through the buildings. Plus, they can only see down, so they are getting quick views of us but we lose them for a few seconds every time we turn.”

Nicole saw another building topple over, a victim of a gas explosion near its base that jeopardized its structural stability. This one fell like a tree, at a forty-five degree angle, taking out a parking garage as it landed. More explosions followed, with flames shooting out from several areas of the fallen structure. Automobiles plummeted from holes in the sides, crashing to the pavement.

“Look over there,” Hemmer shouted, pointing toward a huge bloom of black smoke. It was so large, Nicole couldn’t see what was causing it, but it was as dark as night in its shadow. Hemmer directed the machine downwards, and they saw the fire originated from a huge oil spill, probably from the large truck that had overturned into a corner grocery. Barrels lay all around the truck, oozing black liquid. The Sikorsky flew through the cloud of smoke, then it spun around as the trio heard the jet zoom overhead again.

“I’m going down to land in the smoke,” Hemmer told them. “You won’t be in a building, and you’re a couple blocks south from 42nd and Broadway, but this is as close as we can make it. Plus, the smokescreen won’t hurt. It’s hiding us for now. That bastard in the F-15’s probably wondering where we went.”

The helicopter landed with a bump, and Nicole and Burns grabbed their respective guns and bags and popped the passenger door. The noise that greeted Nicole’s ears was deafening. Crashing explosions, screams, roars, and the ever-whining sound of the jets flying overhead combined into a cacophony of noise that was enough to make her want to add her own screams to the symphony. Everything smelled of smoke or gasoline or blood. As she slammed the door shut behind her, Nicole saw Times Square several blocks ahead. The tourist attraction was almost unrecognizable. Several of the billboards were burning, and the flat iron building at the corner had flames sizzling in its windows, torched from the inside out.

Hemmer raised the helicopter, and it ascended up through the black smoke. Burns gave it a jaunty salute, and he flashed Nicole a big shit-eating grin. The man was thrilled to be back in action again, right in the heart of everything.

Nicole knew her blood was racing through her body. She could hear the thumping of her heart in her ears, and she was getting an adrenaline rush like she’d never experienced, even in the worst combat situations.

This time, it was personal.

2:15 p.m.

Michael Keene seemed to know exactly where he was going. At least, John Creed hoped and prayed he did. He exuded just enough confidence, making deliberate turns in the tunnels, heading left or right without stopping to think about which route took him in which direction. Sometimes, they climbed more rungs or descended into another dank subbasement or sewer channel, but he didn’t even pause when the rooms got alarmingly dark. He merely waved his headlamp around a bit and continued. It was as if he had the sonic abilities of a bat, but it was really because he’d experienced many years in the various tunnels.

“When there’s nothing else left in your life,” he explained to John as they arrived at a juncture, “you do what you can. I explored the world underneath the city. There are some amazing things down here – architecture that’s been deemed old fashioned, whole subway trains from bygone eras retired to side tracks, even an entire town. Must have been two hundred, three hundred people living in this tarpaper shack area.”

“I’d like to see that,” John said, reporter instinct overcoming his terror for a moment. “Not right now, you understand, but…”

“No you wouldn’t. It was a sad, ugly place full of pathetic beings you could barely call human. I always made a point to get aboveground every once in a while, just to keep my priorities straight, keep my head in the right place. You stay too long underground, you start to change, become more like some kind of subterranean animal. There were people down here who hadn’t emerged from the tunnels in ten years, and you wouldn’t want to see them up close. Scary little eyes, practically blind, teeth falling out, grossly skinny. They looked like the zombies you see in those movies they used to show at the grind houses.”

“Or like the Lycanthropes?”

“Sort of,” Michael agreed, whipping around another corner and walking through a gaping hole in a brick wall. “All animal. All instinct. Nothing compassionate or caring left in its soul. Just the urge to get its next meal or its next fix. Sadly, it’s more common than you might think.”

“Yet you managed to avoid becoming like this?”

“I wouldn’t allow myself to sink to that level. Watch out for this step here. Now, we’re going to wade through some water. Hope your shoes aren’t too expensive.”

“Who gives a damn?” John said, thinking of the chaos erupting aboveground.

“I always had it in the back of my mind, what I was, what I had been before I went underground. I had a good job, a great apartment, a beautiful girlfriend who had an amazing little daughter. I know I’ve been down here for years, but I’ve never stopped thinking about the life I had. And how to get it back again.”

“You ever see them? Your girlfriend or her kid?”

Michael glanced backwards, the question interrupting his single-minded progress. His eyes were wide and white in the flashlight’s glare.

“I’d sometimes go to her school, where she worked as a teacher. Second grade. She loved those kids like her own. I would wait by the playground to get a glimpse of her. Her name was Margo, after her mother. She was so beautiful, long dark hair, blue eyes. She wore glasses, and I thought it made her look like some hot librarian. I … I couldn’t approach her. Not like this. Not dirty, filthy, monstrous. I couldn’t scare her like that. Finally, she disappeared. She’d gone to a different school. Transferred or quit. I don’t know.”

“You could still find her.”

Michael shook his shaggy head. “They’re better off without me – Margo and her little girl. You never saw me when I was drinking. The things I did to them, what I put them through. Jesus, even I don’t want to remember any of it, but I do. Every night, I relive those times, and I wonder what if… What if I had married her? What if I hadn’t started on the booze and the drugs? What if … it’ll drive you crazy. It’s easier in a lot of ways to just let them go. To let that whole life go and disappear underground. Like a troll.”

“I’m sorry,” John said.

“Well, yeah, so am I,” Michael said, and he turned and started leading the way out of the tunnels again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

In the distance, echoing along the dampened brick walls, something roared. It made Michael move faster, and John had no trouble this time keeping up with him.

2:20 p.m.

The mutant lions had been lying on a small platform by the tracks for ten minutes now, their five-foot-long tails twitching, their eyes blinking and finally closing in slumber. The male laid his head on his massive front paws and heaved a loud sigh. The female looked around for a while longer before also succumbing to sleep, stretching out parallel to her mate. Their snores could be heard across the lanes of tracks and inside the subway car.