There are details you don’t need to know, details you don’t have any right to know. I’m not going to tell you what a certain squad member told me before I put a bullet in his brain. I’m not going to tell you what his squadmate told me afterward. Pray to whatever imaginary friends you worship that you never have to find out.
I will tell you it wasn’t the pinger that nearly did us in. It wasn’t just the pinger. It was also the Ceph dropship that kept shooting at us through the roof; fucker zipped around like a moth on uppers, it was almost impossible to hit. But the N2 isn’t exactly dog food, either, you know. I dip, I weave. I jump wreckage and piled corpses with a single bound. Somewhere in that shitstorm the pinger goes down in a gout of red fire and I don’t even get to do a victory lap because that alien motherfucker up above the skylight is still raining glass and hollow-points down on the zone.
I don’t take it out, not directly. I wing it, though, knock it off-kilter, send it skidding sideways into the MetLife Building; and MetLife finishes the job. The ship goes up like the Pickering reactor, it’s a beautiful sight, Roger, a glorious sight, but even that doesn’t last because now the whole damn skyscraper’s leaning over in the wake of the blowout, leaning down over the station, and it’s really damn lucky that Barclay’s Banditos finally got that truck running because we barely make the running jump onto the tailboards, barely grab the last bus out of town before MetLife just tips over onto Central and buries it in glass and steel and concrete. Down for the count, for the second time in eight years.
So now we’re flooring it down East 43rd and Central’s just a pile of dust and debris in the rearview. I can hear Barclay down in the cab talking to Dispatch; the local airspace is too hot for traffic but they can probably set a VTOL or two down in Times Square so that’s where we’re headed. But I barely hear that over the other voice in my head, this giddy hysterical voice saying We made it out we made it out we made it out. I don’t know how many times that cycles before another little voice cuts it off with: Whaddya mean, WE?
And that’s the first time I notice. Barclay. The driver. Me. We’re the only ones on board.
Nobody else made it.
They give us twenty minutes to get to evac before the VTOLs withdraw. We pick up a few stragglers on the way—a couple of battered jeeps with even more battered-looking grunts inside, the remains of an airborne battalion on West 43rd, pinned down by angry Ceph and feeling very damn lucky we happened by to lend a hand. By the time we run into the wreckage piled across West 43rd it’s just this side of midnight, and raining. We ditch the vehicles and crawl through the wall of debris on foot.
I’ve never been to Times Square before. Supposed to be the heart of the City That Never Sleeps, right?
It’s not sleeping now.
The traditional line of cabs is still there, although by now most of them are smoldering shells. Half the surrounding buildings have been skinned in patches, five stories of façade ripped off halfway up one tower, a big smoking hole punched into the top of another. An abandoned NYPD van has taken out the front of the Hard Rock Café, a fire engine’s plowed into a USAF recruiting office (not that there’d’ve been anyone lining up to enlist anyway). I have to laugh; even this deep in Armageddon the billboards and marquees are still lit up, scrolling down, ticking along: DOUBLE TEAM YOUR TASTE BUDS. BROOKLYN BRIDGE: MILITARY TRAFFIC ONLY. THIS APOCALYPSE BROUGHT TO YOU BY NIKE.
The only other sources of light are the lines of halogen floods glaring down from the big prefab barricades that wall the square off from the rest of Manhattan. The cookie-cutters have been especially busy here: Every side street’s been sealed off, every avenue blocked by ten-meter walls of interlocked blast-hardened concrete, flat and featureless except for an occasional reinforced hatch to let in the refugees. The barriers even extend inside the perimeter, an extra layer of protection between the square at large and the actual evac site at the north end. Like the fortified keep inside a castle, or a cross section of a giant two-chambered fish heart scaled at ten thousand to one.
We make our way through the ventricle: sandbag revetments, blast shields, pillboxes installed along strategic lines of sight. Voices and VTOL sounds drift over the top of the inner wall. Barclay leads me through into the keep and I’m pleased to see that as his official escort, I’m exempt from being threatened by my own side. Over on the other side the VTOL is spinning up, its belly full of civilians pathetically happy at the prospect of dying somewhere else. The ones left behind jostle and cry and push against a line of marines ringing the load zone. The civilians beg to be taken away; the soldiers make promises and deliver warnings and hope like hell the refugees don’t realize how easy it is for a mob to swarm a single-file perimeter.
That’s about the time the Ceph breach from 42nd and Broadway.
Nothing’s linear after that. Everything happens at once: I’m back outside the keep, forming up ranks with a bunch of Echo-Fivers who must’ve drawn short straws. We man our pillboxes and bring our guns to bear and light up everything down the avenue that walks or squirms. The floodlights at our backs pin the slugs in bright white circles while the Ceph shoot out their reflectors one by one. At least I don’t have to scavenge the bodies of dead comrades for ammo; there are caches stashed everywhere and it’s even raining down from on high, clips and belts and RPGs delivered by human chains over the top of the inner wall. And all the while the VTOLs come and go, drop down empty at our backs and lift off wallowing and straining against the weight of too much loaded meat. Most of the time those cattle cars disappear over the skyline; sometimes they just crash into it, spewing smoke and fire and burning bodies. Barclay’s shouting simultaneous orders in ten different directions. Somehow he manages to keep the fog of war from closing in completely.
Some panicked teenager shouts into his mike with a voice that cracks midsentence, then goes dark: heavy assault units crawling up Broadway. The perimeter is long since breached but so far the walls themselves are holding. That’s something. Not enough, not for long: One Ceph gunship comes down over the keep and it’s a slaughterhouse back there.
A Pinger steps in from stage left and rattles the rooftops. The lights go out. I mean everything: The floodlights on the barricade. The ABC news ticker down the street. The Hard Rock Café. Nike. BMG, Viacom, Planet Hollywood: all dark, all dark.
Madison Avenue has fallen.
We fall back, too. Barclay’s orders.
The ground’s shaking under my feet when I hit the northern hatch. I risk a look over my shoulder but the pinger’s still advancing, not crouched down the way it does when it shits out one of those sonic blasts. I get back through the barrier in time to see a VTOL stagger up into the sky. I look around, do a double take: The place looks downright empty.
No civilians. No lights. The ground shakes again. Someone comms down from the battlements: For some reason the Ceph are pulling out. So are we. The latest incoming VTOL radios in for an update, and Barclay himself lays it down: “Cyclops Four, you’ll be the last—going to be cramped but we’ll get everyone out this time.”
I can hear our getaway softly slashing air in the distance; it drifts into view over the ramparts as I watch. But the tremors haven’t stopped. In fact, they’re getting worse.
Barclay notices: “Cyclops Four, be advised we have unstable—”
I guess he hasn’t been here before.