You know what happens when all those scratches finally strip paint down to the primer? You start scratching the metal.
It’s a running battle, man, it’s a long fucking battle, all of us mice against one big metal dinosaur, and it may be death by a thousand cuts but it’s the JAW that finally brings it down. A single rocket, right under the carapace where the legs plug in. It blooms, Roger, like a flower opening in the morning, it blooms into this great ball of crimson electricity like someone red-shifted the northern lights. The pinger groans, it staggers; it starts to fall, puts out one leg to brace itself and the leg just snaps clean off. That big metal mother goes down like a mountain sliding into the sea.
Delta Six love me to death. I’m the guy who scored the winning touchdown. They slap my back. They like my moves. They say they could really use me back at Central. They call me suit guy, and we shoot some well-deserved shit at those fucking Pentagon brass: Hey, lucky for us the flood wiped the Ceph off the board, yeah, things could be really nasty if those mofos were still around.
And then we hear something.
I don’t know quite how to describe it. A kind of breathy sound, a hooting sound, drifting over the rooftops and down through skyscraper canyons. It seems to come from everywhere and nowhere, an icy, undead whisper. I tell myself that all the hairs on my forearms have not just stood up.
Everyone falls silent as hunted rabbits.
“Dear God,” someone whispers when the sound has stopped. “What is that?”
The CO steps in before that shit can spread: “Stop standing there with your dicks in your hands, people! Sweep for survivors! Fifteen minutes, tops! Then we go find out what’s making that noise, and kick its ass!”
It’s gotta be a joke, of course. But the delivery’s so deadpan you’d never know it.
1610 kHz (unsecured AM)
Source: CPL. EDWARD “TRUTH” NEWTON, USMC (RET.) (confirmed via voiceprint comparison with public archives)
Newton: Oh, man—this, you gotta hear. Remember that little wave swept on through the downtown a few hours back? All the work of those pesky tentacular invaders from another star? Well, we’re getting calls in from civilians across Midtown now, and what they got to say, you got to hear:
Voice #1: Jets, man! I heard jets! Saw the vapor trails. I been hiding out in this city for a solid week now, I know what the Squid airborne sound like. This wasn’t no alien aircraft, man, our own bombers did this to us!
Voice #2: Saw them for sure, Eddie. Air force jets, clear as day. Operational height, ’bout a minute before we heard the blast. It had to be them.
Newton: You getting this, people? That’s—midway through a marine evac operation, some pencil-neck at the DoD decides, just fucking decides, that we are all, from 16th Street on down, expendable assets or hey, just very good swimmers. Well, hell, yeah—why not? All the rich folks? They choppered out of here last week with the mayor and the DA. So what’s left that matters? Just us, people, the dregs and the working stiffs. Well, I got a message for all you dregs still alive out there. Remember this—and stay alive to tell the tale. And—hey, we got a call coming in hot off the grid. Hello caller—who we got here?
Williams: Yeah, Eddie, this is Wayne Williams again.
Newton: Hey, Wayne. Welcome back. How you doin’, man?
Williams: Yeah, we made it into Midtown. And, listen, there’s marines here, just like you said. I got one right here, and get this, Eddie—he wants to talk to you.
O’Brian: This is Gunnery Sergeant O’Brian, US Marines. You that Radio Free Manhattan asshole?
Williams: Sir, yes sir—I am exactly that asshole.
O’Brian: Then I got a job for you. Get this message out, stat. Colonel Barclay’s evacuation will still proceed, despite the flood. Repeat, the evacuation will proceed. Anyone wanting to get out of this city had better haul ass to Central Station. We have outlying squads across Midtown- make yourselves known to them, and they will help as much as they can. That is all. O’Brian out.
Williams: Holy fucking shit! Got that, people? Evac ongoing! Get your asses in gear. Now, we got reports earlier from Wayne and other witnesses up that way saying all this water shallows out around 23rd Street. Ain’t gonna be easy, the ground is seriously fucked up, but it’s the only way you got, so take a marine vet’s advice here—improvise, adapt, overcome. Get to Central Station however you can! And do not stop to shop for shoes. This is your ticket out of here, people. Don’t lose it!
Of course, getting there is half the fun.
I listen to my new friends as we head out, pick up a few insights. The local chain of command is down to a few rusty links by now. Army, airborne, USMC—hell, even the NYPD and the fire department have gone seriously entropic from the top down. What’s left is a mash-up of half a dozen uniforms and half a dozen jurisdictions, deserters and rogues and decent shits who would still do the right thing if only they could get a straight answer from an authorized CO. But over the past few days these lost souls have found their center, their father figure, their beacon of command in the Shitstorm of the Apocalypse.
I hear him on the ether as we slog past 29th and Broadway: “This is Colonel Barclay to all marine fire teams at the primary and secondary perimeters! I want a controlled fallback to the terminus by stages, regrouping as you go! Our objective is full evac of civilians and wounded, and we will hold this station until it’s done! You have at most one hour to make your way back here; after that you’re going to be walking home.”
He doesn’t sound like the Second Coming. He sounds like he thinks the world’s going to lie down on the job the moment he drops his voice below fifty decibels. But Chino’s vouched for the man, and every surviving jarhead and gravel-pounder seems to back him up: Sherman Barclay is the only reason the Ceph are still facing any organized resistance at all. Without him, we’d all be Lord of the Flies by now.
Central Station is well above the flood zone; everything north of 26th stayed high and dry. Too dry, actually: Carbon and clouds water down what’s left of the late-afternoon sun, and coming up Sixth we can see the storefronts glowing from five blocks away. A couple of the guys start coughing as we cross 36th—
“Smell that? What the fuck is that?”
—and I crank open my hepafilter to get a whiff for myself. Not the usual taste of a city on fire; I’ve smelled that a hundred times since I joined up, it sits in the back of your throat and stings your eyes like an old friend. The smell of this great burning is different, somehow. More—acrid. It’s not completely unfamiliar, though. I’ve smelled it once before, down in Texas during the Secession Riots. Mob was torching a publisher’s warehouse full of science texts.
Oh, yes. I know that smell.
“This is Charlie Seven. The western approach is compromised. We are pinned down at the library on Fifth and West 42nd. We’ve got dozens of civilians here. Requesting fire support to get ’em through to the station.”