Nate Kenyon - Day One

Hawke looked around, didn’t spot the security guard or the building manager. There was nobody in charge. The entire world had suddenly gone insane. Who had locked the doors, and why? It made no sense.

Vasco and Price came out of the stairwell and put Kessler down on her back. Hawke’s stomach rolled greasily as he watched Kessler’s hands flop lifelessly away from her neck to reveal a deep slash like an ugly, lipless mouth, blood slowly bubbling up and oozing across the tile floor. Price’s shirt was soaked with red. He clapped his own hand down over her neck wound, pressing hard, and started shouting for someone to call 911.

Vasco was pacing, pressing his phone’s screen and cursing. “Check your cell,” he said to Young over the sound of the alarms, and she pulled out her own phone.

“No service,” she said.

“Check it again!” He whirled, questioning, to Hawke, who shook his head. He couldn’t take his eyes off Kessler, the blood spreading out below her body in spite of Price’s frantic efforts to stop it. Hawke thought of the electrocution of Bradbury; how had that much power come through the lamp’s cord? The breakers should have popped.

Vasco was in Hawke’s face, breathing hard and smelling like sweat. “Check your fucking cell,” he said.

“It’s bricked,” Hawke said. “Happened upstairs.”

“Fuck!” Vasco whirled again, suddenly looked around the lobby. “Where’s everybody else?”

“Bradbury’s dead,” Hawke said. “I saw him… he was electrocuted. Weller, I have no idea. He was supposed to be right behind us.”

“He’s still up there,” Young said. She looked at the door to the stairs. When she started toward it, Hawke grabbed her. Her pupils were dilated, her breathing fast and shallow.

“You can’t go back,” he said.

“He might be trapped,” she said. “We can’t just leave him. You don’t understand; they’re going to—”

“ You can’t go back up there, ” he said. He took her by both her arms and stared into her pale, shivering face. “You get that? This is real; people are getting killed .”

More people came tumbling out of the stairs and into the lobby, none of them familiar; they barely glanced at Hawke and Young but went straight for the doors, joining the others. The noise level increased as more of them pounded at the glass, rattled the handles. “What the hell is going on out there?!” a man shouted. “Let us out!” And someone else screamed as a screech and rending crash came from somewhere on the street, some kind of accident.

The alarms were relentless, drilling into Hawke’s head. Young pulled herself away and he let her go, noticing something else strange; the security cameras mounted in the corners of the lobby that normally panned slowly back and forth were now moving deliberately, as if someone was controlling them.

He watched one of them swing around in his direction and stop, the camera’s unblinking eye fixed on his location. The effect was both eerie and menacing. There was nobody at the front desk, and he walked toward it, hypnotized by the eye, peering at the monitors behind the counter and watching himself reflected back through the camera.

The big man in the suit who had fallen in the stairwell came up next to him, shouldering him aside and breaking his trance. “Get the fuck out of the way,” the man snarled, panting hard. Hawke caught a glimpse of a purple, knotted welt above the man’s left eye as he picked up the desk chair and lifted it over his head, the chair wheels spinning as he turned and ran toward the lobby entrance.

“Get the fuck out of my way!” he shouted again, and the crowd parted just before the man heaved the chair at the glass doors.

The chair was heavy, solid metal and leather, and it caught the impact-resistant glass pane at its center, leading with one leg like a spear. The glass groaned and gave way with a tremendous, shattering crash, spilling out onto the sidewalk as the chair went tumbling and bouncing into the street.

It was like a dam had broken. The crowd surged forward, knocking away the rest of the glass that still hung from the frame, pushing and shoving one another to get through the opening.

Hawke looked around the lobby, trying to find familiar faces among the people who kept coming from the stairwell. He couldn’t see Weller or Young. Price was crouched over Kessler’s lifeless body, hands still clapped hard against her neck. A woman hit Price’s shoulder as she ran by, nearly knocking him over; he reached down and pulled Kessler to him, cradling her against his chest.

Hawke fought his way against the rushing crowd, pushing through to Price’s side. Price looked up at him, his face white with shock. “Call nine-one-one,” he said. “She’s bleeding. Someone has to help her.”

Kessler’s face was slack, her eyes open and fixed. The wound in her neck had stopped bubbling. “She’s gone,” Hawke said. He could smell smoke. “We need to get out of here.”

Price looked down at Kessler, shook his head. “No,” he said. But he set her gently down and let Hawke help him to his feet. His shirt was soaked in Kessler’s blood.

One arm around Price’s waist, Hawke followed the others out through the broken glass doors, away from the noise of the alarms and into hell.

11:17 A.M.

OUTSIDE, people were rushing everywhere in a panic, shoving one another to get away. Smoke swirled in the air; abandoned cars sat up on the sidewalk with their doors hanging open while other drivers honked their horns against snarled traffic. A series of wrenching crashes echoed through the street as a taxi tried to race around a jammed intersection and slammed into a shiny silver Mercedes sedan, sending it spinning into a Nissan that had been left by the curb. Screams and shouts mixed with the rending of metal, booms of secondary explosions that came from every direction, the shriek of rubber and the growing rumble of something far larger and more terrifying, like the collapse of entire buildings somewhere out of sight.

Hawke helped Price move away from the Conn.ect building to an empty spot on the curb, where he sat Price down and crouched next to him. The man seemed unable to support his own weight. “You hurt?” Hawke said. Price shook his head no. He was crying silently, looking down at his hands, still sticky with Kessler’s blood.

Hawke stood up and looked around with a fresh sense of shock. A block away, a gigantic, gaping hole had swallowed the intersection of Second Avenue and East 78th Street, smoke and flames shooting up from below, asphalt buckled and melting in all directions. He could feel the heat from where he stood. A city bus, barely visible through the rippling flames, had toppled into the hole, upended and tilted sideways, the ads that adorned its sides blackened with smoke. The Mexican restaurant on the corner with the brown plastic booths and corrugated metal roof was gone, the building that had contained it gaping open and licked by fire. The other side of the street had fared slightly better, but Girardi’s market had been defaced with flames and smoke and the awning on the Vietnamese place next door was burning like a torch.

He flashed back to his nightmare: Thomas, being yanked away from him by slippery-smooth tentacles whipping down from above. The heat of the fires nearby washed over Hawke, bringing tears. More smoke billowed up over the city, pillars of it swirling through the blue sky and winding away like balloon strings. The chaos was absolute; Armageddon had descended in a split second’s time. He hadn’t had time to process this. Everything had gone down so fast, and getting down to the lobby was a blur, fueled by adrenaline and a focus on survival. It was all too big, too overwhelming, completely alien and wrong in a way that made him feel numb. This couldn’t be happening, there was no reason or explanation for it, and yet it was; the mental pressure was building around him, strong as an approaching tornado, sucking air from his lungs, whipping dust and debris into every crack and crevice.