Plissken broke for the station, the driver back out and ready in his hand. He kicked high as he ran, trying to keep his footing on the uneven ground. A fine spray of sand arced out from his feet with every step.
He turned once to glance back at the vator box, the only outward sign of the bank building beneath. No one was coming yet; he was still in good shape.
He got up to the massive bunker door and jammed the driver into the ID slot. Nothing.
“Damn,” Plissken whispered.
He took it out and plunged it in again, jiggling the handle. It didn’t budge.
“Come on, honey,” he coaxed. “Just for me.”
He looked back at the distant vator. The outer doors were beginning to slide open. He jerked his head back to the slot
Stepping back a pace, he took a deep breath then kicked out viciously with the heel of a jungle-booted foot. He forced the driver into the slot mechanism up to the handle. The machine sparked for a few seconds, then groaned open with a hydraulic hum.
Plissken moved inside and got the door shut just as the first blackbelly emerged from the bank vator. He hurried the heavy door closed, then jammed the driver into the space between the door and the frame to freeze it up.
Safe… for a while.
The inside of the transfer station was dark and cool. A soft blue illuminated arrow pointed down the stairs to the platform. Plissken navigated the stairs. They were glowing gently from the luminescence of several tiny wink lights inset within.
As he reached the bottom step, he could hear the blackbellies pounding on the outer door. They’d get through eventually, but it would take time. The transfer bunkers were designed to withstand assault
The platform was quiet and empty. It was lit to a soft yellow vapor haze and seemed to stretch out forever. Plissken walked easily across the concrete floor, moving for the destination panel.
The panel was set in an alcove near the foot of the stairs. He moved within and checked the big board. The lights moved sequentially across a stationary grid, and showed the closest hummers and their terminals.
There was a hummer moving on line to Eugene, Oregon, that would reach the station soon. He punched up those coordinates on the machine, then shoved the credit disc of one George Moropy into the slot. He had absolutely no intention of taking the Eugene hummer, but punched it up because that’s what they’d figure him to do. The war was still being fought heavily in the west, which left a lot of badlands for people like Plissken to lose themselves in. And west he would go. But not right away.
After the Eugene transaction had rung up green on the viewer, Plissken punched up the Atlanta coordinates, and bought the trip with Lynda Millford’s card. Bill Taylor was waiting in Atlanta, and he’d take care of their western connections.
Plissken moved back out on the platform, standing by the eastbound tubes. The tubes were thick plastic, nearly opaque. Occasionally a hummer would swish through, pinging on the internal tube rings, showing up on the outside as a speeding band of bright light. Then it would get quiet again. The tubes were a rich man’s conveyance, and that very exclusive club got smaller and smaller all the time.
A hummer screeched to a stop on the other side of the platform, the westbound side. The Eugene express. Plissken turned to watch it. A section of the tube slid away and a pleasant but authoritative male voice said: “Eugene, Portland, Salem and points west. All aboard please.”
There was silence for a minute, then the message was repeated. The hummer stayed around for a while longer, then the doors slid quietly closed and the machine pinged away. Plissken figured that the blackbellies would trace that one. He hoped that they’d leave the next one alone.
It wasn’t five minutes before the Atlanta transfer came along. Plissken boarded gratefully, and sat himself down in the soft, white “G” seat in his very own compartment. Plissken always traveled first class. He figured that Lynda Millford could afford it.
Quiet music drifted gently down from somewhere, and the computer spoke to him. “Going to Atlanta?” it asked.
“Yes,” he answered, leaning his head back against the seat “Atlanta.”
“Fasten your seatbelt please.”
Plissken fastened his seatbelt, but not too much.
“Oh, come now,” the machine said. “You can do better than that.”
Plissken did better.
“That’s good. Well be underway in a matter of seconds. After acceleration, can we get you a drink?”
Snake Plissken watched the wall close up around him. “Yes,” he replied. “A drink would be nice. Make it a double.”
II
October 21
10:07 P.M.
Plissken had picked up the name Snake in the service, and it had stuck so hard that now there was nobody left alive on the face of the planet who knew his real first name.
He had been a hot shot college boy when they commissioned him as a lieutenant and sent him to the Russian front. Everyone had been real excited about the war when it first came around. It had been, after all, a long time since the last real confrontation and everyone needed to flex their ego muscles a little.
It had started small and built somewhere in the Middle East. It was the gradual build-up that somehow managed to keep the nukes out of it. There had been a conference in Stockholm early on, where the principal nations agreed to avoid the nuclear exchange to protect the nonaligned nations of the world. That was just a smoke screen, of course. In actuality, nobody wanted their shit blown away finally and completely.
So they decided on something else, something that sounded very harmless and sophisticated. They decided on chemicals. Plissken smiled when he thought about that. He was watching the contact points slide past his window, and trying to ignore the pain in his bad eye.
The chemicals were nasty. He supposed that there was no way of killing that wasn’t nasty underneath it all, but the chemical clouds that continually floated in the atmosphere killed in slow motion. No one was untouched by them. They rolled in quietly, odorlessly and tastelessly, eating away bits of brain cells and nervous systems as they did. The chemicals made people crazy before they killed them. There were crazy people running around all over the place. Lots of them. Millions of them.
“Atlanta Station in five minutes,” the computer voice said.
He pulled his hair back in some semblance of order and checked his watch. A bit ahead of schedule. He looked down at the satchel on his lap.
They called him Snake because he had a knack for slithering out of trouble. He commanded a search and destroy squad that had the best record of success in the entire Russian campaign. No one could figure out why the Snake did so well; but the Snake knew. Some people built things with their hands. Others could compose beautiful music or had a head for figures. Snake Plissken had a talent for making war. It was in his blood.
“Atlanta Station,” chimed the voice. “Thank you for tubing with us.”
The compartment roared around him, and the rush of decel strained him forward against the straps. The thing stopped with a slight jerk, and Plissken was out of his belt and standing before the tube hatched open.
When the wall section slid away, he stepped right out onto the platform, looking back and forth. No one. No blackbellies. No nothing.
He didn’t realize that he had been holding his breath until the air rushed out of him. He smiled and went looking for Taylor.
Taylor had been with him that morning in the CO’s office in Helsinki when they first heard of the so-called “Leningrad Ruse.” It was early, bleak fall and the low, rolling gray clouds, distended with gas, were dropping a lethal acid rain onto ground already barren and dead from floating poisons. They were forced to go around for weeks at a time in their gas gear, speaking to one another through mikes in their masks.