Galloway sat on the ticket hall floor. He had a leather belt tightly strapped around his forearm. A dripping stump where his hand used to be.
The air around him was tinged purple. A halo of exhaust smoke and blood mist.
He looked euphoric.
‘Holy mother of God,’ murmured Lupe.
The severed hand lay in a puddle of blood.
Donahue threw a balled T-shirt at Sicknote.
‘Wipe that shit off your face. Do it quick. He’s infected. And mop the floor, for Christ’s sake. We have to clean this mess up.’
‘What’s going on?’ demanded Wade, groping along the wall. ‘Someone tell me what the hell is going on.’
‘Just stay there, all right? Hang back. There’s blood. We’ve got to glove-up and sterilise this place.’
Donahue double-gloved, crouched and picked up a hypodermic.
‘What did you shoot? Dilaudid? How much did you take?’
Galloway shrugged. He held up his stump. Woozy smile.
‘Ain’t going out without a fight.’
34
Tombes walked among rows of bodies. The beam of his flashlight played over desiccated cadavers.
He plugged his nostrils with tissue. He searched pockets. He uncurled each fist and retrieved crumpled sheets of paper. Suicide notes stained with blood-spray and the mottled leak-grease of decomposition.
Cloke pulled open the door to the adjoining carriage.
Boxed lab equipment. Toppled stacks of high-impact Peli cases, like tumbled building blocks.
He pictured the chaos. The presidential announcement. Planes are in the air. Ten major cities selected for destruction:
Los Angeles.
Chicago.
Houston.
Philadelphia.
Phoenix.
San Antonio.
San Diego.
Dallas.
San Jose.
New York.
Panic. Less than an hour until a B2 reaches Manhattan and releases its payload.
Ivanek screaming at the radio, desperate to reach NORAD, desperate to tell them the Bellevue team is alive and they should call off the strike.
Soldiers and medics grab gear from the Fenwick Street platform and hurl supplies aboard the train. Their entire bivouac broken down in minutes. Cots, cooking utensils and lab equipment tossed through carriage doorways.
Personnel cower aboard the train, sobbing with fear as Donovan, the commanding officer, makes one last sweep of the station. He sprints across the ticket hall. He kicks open the plant room door and checks the IRT office, makes sure the place is stripped of gear and no one left behind.
He runs down the platform steps three at a time, yells to the motorman hanging out of his cab: All clear. He hurls himself aboard the train. The doors slide shut and the locomotive pulls away from the platform.
They sit parked in the tunnel, counting down the minutes, praying and weeping, waiting for the strike.
They knew how detonation would unfold:
EMP would kill the power. A half second of darkness, then they would feel a sudden ear-popping change of tunnel pressure. Half a second later, the blast wave would hit.
Maybe they passed round a pistol and blew their brains out before the bomb exploded. To escape the horror. To escape the fear.
Cloke found a plastic bag. He flapped it open.
He kicked through the wreckage. Thumb drives. A pile of printout. Clipboards loaded with paper. He stuffed them in the bag.
A PC. He threw it on the floor. He kicked the aluminium chassis and tore out the hard drive. He dropped it in the bag.
The next carriage.
Cloke paused in the doorway. He pressed his face to the glass. Darkness within. A couple of winking, emerald LEDs. Something powered up.
He pulled the door aside. Machine hum. Faint white-noise hiss.
He adjusted his grip on the hammer.
‘Hey. Anyone home?’
He edged into the carriage.
His foot hit an obstruction. He shone his flashlight at the floor. A desiccated cadaver. Back arched, rigor-stiff, locked in a final death agony. The guy had a bayonet bedded deep in his eye socket, hands wrapped round the handle like he drove the blade into his own head.
No signs of infection. Cloke knelt and patted him down. Empty pockets, empty holster. He plucked the tag from the dead man’s neck.
Something grotesque at the back of the carriage. Metallic ropes and tendrils snaked across the floor, the walls, the roof.
Cloke reluctant to focus his flashlight. Sudden, gut conviction that he should turn and leave. Better not to see. Better not to know.
He forced himself to look.
‘Mother of God,’ he murmured.
Something at the centre of the knotted mess. The radio operator. He sat on a swivel chair, slumped over the receiver, embedded like the radio was eating him head first. He had succumbed to infection. His upper body was a mass of rippled metal. He was fused with the transmitter, fused with the torrent of chrome spilling across the floor, melding with the fabric of the carriage.
Cloke stepped between tendrils rooted in the splintered floorboards.
The young man gripped the edge of the table. His hand seemed healthy, normal. Cloke pulled off a glove, intending to check for warmth, for life, but glanced at the metal-melded head and withdrew.
He examined the radio. A green power light pulsed like a heartbeat. Frequency needles twitched in time to the strange, cardiovascular rhythm.
He checked beneath the table. The power cable hung severed and frayed.
It was as if the radio had become an extension of the kid’s nervous system. The chips and circuits were now incorporated into the neural architecture of his brain, responding to fleeting static-bursts of synaptic activity.
Cloke unhooked the Motorola from his belt and retuned.
‘Rescue party calling Bellevue, can anyone hear me, over?’
No response.
‘Ivanek. Can you hear me? Can you hear my voice?’
Transmission needles twitched and rose.
The young man’s voice crackled through the speaker of Cloke’s radio. Distant, shouting to be heard over a storm-howl of interference.
‘Who is this? Who is talking?’
‘Cloke. Matthew Cloke. I’m here to help.’
‘Am I dreaming?’
‘No. You’re not dreaming.’
‘Am I alive?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in Manhattan. You’re in a subway tunnel. There was a bomb.’
‘My memory. Things come and go.’
‘Just take it easy.’
‘Why can’t I see you?’
‘It’s dark.’
‘Where are the others?’
‘The Cav?’
‘We were waiting for the bomb, counting down the minutes.’
‘Don’t worry about them.’
‘Where’s the woman? I spoke to a woman.’
‘She can’t be with us. She had to stay behind.’
‘Please. Come quickly.’
‘What happened? Can you remember?’
‘I don’t know how I got here.’
‘Where are you? Can you describe it to me?’
‘I’m alone. It’s cold. It’s dark. There’s no one here but me.’
‘Don’t worry kid. We’ll be with you soon.’
An ammo trunk stamped 5.56MM PYRO. Tombes lifted the lid. Bean tins.
He sat on the trunk, surrounded by food boxes, bedding rolls and medical gear. Stuff hurled aboard the train in the panic of evacuation.
A Nike holdall on the floor beside him. He lifted the flap. Civilian stuff. Photographs, jewellery, bank documents. Someone fled an apartment, swept their life into a bag as they headed for the door.