For a brief moment, he contemplated making the bed.
Leaving the bedroom, he returned to the living room. The apartment was situated on the thirtieth floor, twenty feet above the dense layer of an ominous brown maelstrom. At the moment, the night sky above the balcony was starry and clear, offering a bizarre view of a cloud city — Steven imprisoned in this penthouse nightmare… alone.
Veronica was lying on the U-shaped leather couch. The Veterans Administration nurse’s pale face was no longer pained, her blue eyes fixed in a glassy, red-rimmed open stare. Steven had washed the blood from his wife’s lips and throat, covering the frightening black tennis-ball-sized welt on her slender neck with the wool blanket.
Leaning over, he kissed his deceased partner on her cold lips. “I left the kids a letter, along with instructions… just like we talked about. Wait for me, hon. I’ll only be a minute.”
Steven Mennella blew out the candles. Clearing his throat, he strode toward the open French doors leading out to the balcony. The full moon was low on the horizon, revealing the thick bank of mud-colored clouds gyrating below. A frigid wind greeted him as he gracefully stepped up onto his favorite chaise lounge, balanced himself on the aluminum rail—
— and stepped off the balcony.
Icy crystals formed on his flesh as he plummeted through the noxious man-made chemical cloud, the wind howling in his ears…
There was no warning. One moment, Paolo was veering around a mailbox—
— the next, the van was struck by a human meteor.
The hood detonated, the impact crushing the engine block and bursting both front tires. Paolo jammed on the brakes, sending the crippled vehicle skidding sideways into a light pole. Antifreeze exploded out of the damaged front end, soaking the windshield, which looked like a burst watermelon across the spiderweb shattered glass.
The horn wailed and died, yielding to the whimpering chorus of hyperventilated breaths. Francesca palpated her strained swollen belly. “What the hell was that?”
“Everyone out of the car.” Shep kicked open the passenger door, ventilating the van with toxic steam from the antifreeze. For a moment, he stared at the remains of Sergeant Steven Mennella, the corpse embedded in the hood, face-up. Then he turned away. “We need to find another vehicle that runs.”
Not waiting for the others, he sloshed down East 68th Street, his legs calf deep in a moving stream of cold water by the time he reached the intersection of Park Avenue. Main must’ve broken. Maybe a fire hydrant?
Then he saw the nightmarish scene and prayed it was the vaccine.
Park Avenue’s six-lane boulevard resembled a scene straight out of Hades. High-rise office buildings and condominiums formed an ominous corridor squeezed beneath a ceiling of roiling brown clouds. Functioning as insulation, the man-made atmosphere had encapsulated the heat from dozens of car fires, the rising temperatures melting the snow that had been piled high along the curbs, transforming one of Manhattan’s major arteries into a river. Contaminated with gasoline, the floodwaters sprouted pockets of flames that burst and receded across the hellish scene.
Whomp.
The distant sound was somehow familiar, causing the hairs on the back of Shep’s neck to stand on end.
Whomp. Whomp…
His eyes locked onto an object as it dropped out of the clouds a block away. He never saw the impact, but he heard it as it struck a parked vehicle, setting off a car alarm.
Another object dropped, then two more. Shep swooned, having realized what he was witnessing.
Manhattan was raining its dead.
But not every object was corpse. Plague-infested suicides leapt from candle-lit apartment windows, dancing in free fall before pulverizing the roofs and hoods and trunks of the countless vehicles that clogged Park Avenue, their insides splattering on impact.
Paolo joined Shep, the two men dumbstruck. “Is this an illusion?”
“No.”
The flood became a swiftly moving current as it swept around Park Avenue onto 68th Street, dragging an object with it. The glow from a burning vehicle revealed the body of a small child.
The image triggered a collage of remembered images that staggered Shep. His heart raced, his senses blinking in and out of reality until suddenly he was no longer in Manhattan—
— suddenly he is back in Iraq, standing along the banks of the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway.
It is dusk, the horizon purging sunlight into orange flames, squelching the heat of day into a tolerable climate. David Kantor is with him, the medic assisting an Iraqi physician. Dr. Farid Hassan drags a headless body from out of the shoreline’s weeds.
David inspects the remains. “Looks like more of al-Zarqawi’s work. Dr. Hassan?”
“I would agree.”
Patrick Shepherd, two months into his first tour of duty, responds with a belch of acid reflux. “What I wouldn’t give to line those bastards up one at a time.”
The Iraqi physician exchanges a knowing look with the American medic. “Dr. Kantor tells me this is your first time in Iraq, yes?”
“Yeah.” Shep searches the weeds for more dead.
“He says you played professional baseball. My son, Ali, he also loved sports. A natural athlete, my son.”
“Hook us up. I’ll teach him how to throw a slider.”
“Ali died four years ago. He was only eight years old.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
“But these are just polite words. Are you really sorry? How can you possibly feel the sadness in my heart?”
A cramp-like stitch grips Patrick’s chest. He winces in pain, yet neither David nor Dr. Hassan seem to notice.
In the distance, a small boat approached. A lone figure stood in the bow, its cloaked outline silhouetted by the setting sun.
“If you were truly sorry, Sergeant, you would be home playing baseball, telling your many American fans that the war is wrong. Instead, you are in Iraq, carrying an assault rifle, pretending to be Rambo. Why are you in Iraq carrying an assault rifle, Sergeant Shepherd?”
An internal switch flips, his blood again running cold. “In case you didn’t get the memo, we were attacked.”
“And who attacked you? The September 11 hijackers were Saudis. Why aren’t you in Saudi Arabia, killing Saudi children?”
“American soldiers don’t murder children. I mean, with all due respect, no one ever means to hurt a child. Help me out here, Dr. Kantor.”
“Sorry, rook, it’s time you opened your eyes. There is no Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny’s dead, and everything you think you learned about war from Hollywood and Uncle Sam is bullshit. You think Cheney and Rumsfeld give a rat’s ass about WMDs or Iraqi freedom? Newsflash, Shep: This invasion was strictly about money and power. Our job is to control the populace so Washington can control the oil and make a bunch of rich people a whole lot richer. And those billions allocated for reconstruction? The money’s being spent on military bases, lining the pockets of private contractors like Haliburton and Brown and Root. Bechtel was given the contract to control the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and they’re reaping a fortune while the locals are left with water that’s no longer potable. Money and power, kid, and the real casualties of war are the children. Of course, I doubt that story will ever air on the nightly news.”