Sean Black - Lockdown

He stepped from his cruiser, drew his weapon, an old-school stainless-steel Smith and Wesson 64 revolver, and levelled it at the centre of her chest. ‘Stop right there.’

She kept coming.

He’d heard something at one of the briefings about a woman. He knew she was foreign. Someone had said something about her not speaking English. Or was it that she could speak it? Damn. He should have been paying more attention, instead of texting one of his patrol guys to swing by Burritoville.

‘Lady, stop right there.’

He looked around for back-up but everyone seemed to be pouring, like flies to shit, through the gates towards the buildings.

Still she kept coming. Utterly calm. No sign on her face that she even saw his gun.

A woman. Fresh off the boat. Who maybe didn’t understand what he was saying.

Then she stopped. Maybe ten feet from him. Maybe less. Never breaking eye contact. Never looking at his gun. Tuning it out.

‘OK, that’s good. Now, stay there and don’t move.’

But move she did, placing the cooler on the ground. One hand reaching across her chest.

‘I said, don’t move.’

She was wearing a padded man’s ski jacket, or at least that was what it looked like to Caffrey. Her hand wrenched at the zipper.

He’d have to wait to see a weapon. Couldn’t shoot someone for unzipping their jacket.

‘OK, that’s far enough.’

She kept going, yanking the zipper free at the bottom.

‘Lady, I don’t have time for games.’

‘Neither do we.’ A man stepped from the shadows. White. A young guy. Covered in a thin layer of grey dust that made him look like one of those human statue guys who hung out in Midtown making money from tourists. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Show him.’

Slowly, deliberately, the woman pulled the jacket to one side, and the hand holding Caffrey’s gun stopped working. The Smith and Wesson tumbled to the ground.

Twenty-four years of jumpers, jackers, slashers, stoners, rapists, recidivists, baby killers and crackheads. Twenty-four years of witnessing what was very often the lowest point in someone’s life. Over and over again. A never-ending loop of human failing, which occasionally seeped into evil. Caffrey was sure he had seen, smelled, tasted, heard, touched and, yeah, even sensed it all. But this, this went way further.

She held the jacket open with a stage magician’s flourish and Caffrey stood there, half expecting her to take a bow. But all that happened was that the guy who was standing behind her ran forward to retrieve Caffrey’s service revolver.

Still transfixed, Caffrey didn’t try to stop him.

‘You have a cell phone?’

‘What?’ said Caffrey.

The guy pointed the gun at Caffrey. Caffrey barely registered it.

‘Do you have a cell phone?’ the guy asked again.

‘In the car.’

‘Go get it,’ he instructed. ‘I need the number.’

Smoke rose from every building in the compound. In two, fires still burned, the foam pumped into them by fire crews wearing respirators and bio-suits seemingly doing little to dampen the flames. Between buildings, bodies lay scattered. The detainees had put in a good shift resisting the assault, taking with them at least half a dozen JTTF and other personnel.

In the Center for Disease Control trailer, Lock was losing patience as he waited for his test results. ‘How many times? Right now I might be one of the safest people in America.’

His pleas cut no ice. There was procedure, and it was going to be followed. Outside he could hear the chatter on the radios was accelerating rather than diminishing. Not a good sign after an assault. Then, as one of the CDC techs made her final checks, he heard Ty giving someone some serious shit right outside the door.

‘You lost her? You assholes!’

That was it. Lock was on his feet and out, brushing aside the thick-necked twat on the door with an open palm.

The guy followed him out, drawing his weapon. ‘Sir, step back inside.’

‘I’ve met meter maids that were more intimidating than you, bud, so put away the pistol while your hands still work.’

The confrontation was cut short by the CDC tech. ‘It’s OK, Brad, he’s clear.’

Lock joined Ty. ‘The Ghost done it again?’

‘Looking that way.’

Lock glanced back to the smouldering ruins as an NYPD Bomb Squad bulldozer trundled past them. ‘Hell, she’s probably halfway to South America with what’s left of the family fortune by now. What about everyone else?’

‘Richard’s safe, back with his boy. Hey, we did what we set out to. Just have to tie up the loose end.’

‘I’d say that crazy bitch rigged to two kilos of C4 is more than a loose end.’

‘She’s Chechen. Thought they had a beef with the Russians, not us.’

‘They didn’t, until now,’ said Frisk, coming up fast behind them. ‘And she’s not the only thing that’s unaccounted for.’

‘Care to elaborate?’

‘The entire stock of Ebola variant’s gone too.’

High above the Manhattan skyline, night-time and a set of rolling winter clouds rendered four Air Force F-15s invisible as they threw a wide loop around the island. Below, the skies were empty, save for the NYPD’s fleet of seven choppers which buzzed briskly around Midtown. All other commercial aircraft had been grounded, Kennedy closed; ditto La Guardia and Newark.

Beneath them, the chopper pilots could trace a red pulse of brake lights snaking along the full length of the Brooklyn, Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Sitting next to the pilots, sharpshooters, ready to dispense retribution from on high, checked and re-cheked their weapons, waiting for the call.

The same red points could be glimpsed in the far distance on the Queensboro Bridge, and at the entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel. On the other side of the island the traffic waiting to enter the Lincoln Tunnel seemed to back up all the way to some distant New Jersey exit ramp even Springsteen hadn’t heard of.

From up in the gods, the city seemed to be enjoying a sudden spike in popularity at the very moment it had finally maxed out its capacity to contain any more human beings. The sky, finally, appeared to have a limit.

Underground was a different reality. Four hundred passengers sat in the carriages of the A-Train, and didn’t move. Tense. Silent. Further down the track, people being ushered from the platforms and back out on to the street. Iron grilles being pulled across. The city’s veins snapping shut one by one.

It was the same story with the Holland Tunnel. Same story with every tunnel leading into the city. Car engines switched off. Angry drivers exchanging less than pleasantries with stony-faced cops.

‘I got my daughter to pick up from a party. She called an hour ago. She was crying.’

‘But my apartment’s flooded. The super called me. I’ve had to drive here all the way from Maine.’

‘What difference is it gonna make letting one car through, officer?’

Every plea, exhortation and bribe met with the same response. No dice. The city’s closed. No one’s getting in, and no one’s getting out.

Manhattan’s locked down.

‘So who d’you think’s gonna take the bragging rights?’ asked Ty as the chopper cut low and left across the East River towards Manhattan.

‘What the hell are you talking about? What bragging rights?’ Lock asked, struggling to be heard above the thud of the rotor blades.

‘Judgement Day, fool. The Jews think they’re the lost tribe, right? And then you got the Protestants. They’re the elect. Ditto the Catholics. Mormons think it’s them. Muslims. Damn, wouldn’t that be a kick in the nuts after all the shit they’ve pulled recently? Hindus? Can’t see it myself. Jehovah’s Witnesses? Hmm, done some hard lobbying. Gotta factor that in. Buddhists think they’re gonna be coming back as butterflies or some shit. But it stands to reason, they can’t all be right. Wanna know who my money’s on?’