Adam Baker - Terminus

‘They couldn’t go north. That would take them into the blast zone.

‘So they hid in the tunnel. They pulled away from the Fenwick platform. Not far. Just clear of the station entrance and street grates. They wanted to get deep as they could, put a little distance between themselves and the shockwave. They sat aboard the train as the last seconds ticked away, plugged their ears, huddled in the crash position, and hoped the tunnel roof wouldn’t come down on their heads.

‘That’s your big secret, isn’t it? Your ace in the hole. You knew exactly where Ekks and his boys would hide when the bomb dropped. The team are still here, aren’t they? They’re inside the tunnel, just out of sight.’

Lupe leaned and spat between Nariko’s boots.

‘And so what? So what if they are down in the dark? The bomb dropped. They’re dead a dozen times over. Burned, drowned, irradiated, buried under rubble. And even if a couple of them made it, ate their buddies, drank their own piss, whatever it took to survive, you can’t reach the train. The tunnel is fucked. Radioactive flood water, rising higher by the minute. And this is an old section of line. Some old-timer with a trowel put it together brick by brick. That passage was a serious subsidence risk even before the bomb. Face it. You’re wasting your time here, girl. You’re on a fool’s errand. There’s nothing to find. No cure. No salvation. Just lingering death. Sooner we all get out of here the better.’

The IRT office.

Nariko pushed the radio aside and spread charts on the table. Cloke helped shake scrolled maps from chart-tubes and unravel them. They pegged the curled sheets open with bottled water and an old rotary phone.

Multiple street plans. Port Authority. Department of Transport. Utility schematics. The veins and capillaries of sub-surface Manhattan. The city spread open like a biopsy, marbled with sewer pipes, gas mains, copper-core Con Edison trunk lines and Verizon fibre optic cable clusters.

Nariko examined an MTA map. She circled a section of tunnel.

‘Fenwick Street is part of the Downtown Liberty Line, the oldest and deepest section of track.’ She pointed to a dendritic junction. ‘If Ekks and his boys headed north a little ways towards Canal they should be here: the tunnel beneath Broadway.’

‘That’s a half-mile hike. In these conditions? Might as well be on Mars.’

‘It would be a tough extraction. But it could be done. They aren’t beyond reach.’

‘The flood water is already waist-deep,’ said Cloke. ‘The suits will offer some protection, but we’d still get a steady gamma dose just by being in proximity to such a strong radiation source. And if that residue splashes bare skin, the beta burns would be horrific. Essentially, we’d be navigating a river of acid.’

‘My boys trained for this kind of deal.’

‘I don’t like it. It’s a hell of a risk.’

‘You pushed for this shit. You brought us here. Can’t pussy out now.’

‘I guess.’

‘It’s down to you. This is a military assignment. Stay or go. You decide.’

Cloke thought it over.

‘Bottom line: we’ve got orders. We’ve got a job to do.’ He spoke like he was lecturing himself, psyching for the mission. ‘Ekks is probably dead. But if he left a scribble on a note pad, a string of code on a hard drive, it could be the only thing standing between the human race and extinction. We can’t walk away. Not while there is a flicker of hope.’

‘So who goes?’ asked Nariko.

‘Me. You. Ideally, we need a third person for backup. Donahue or Tombes. But we can’t force them to go. A mission like this has to be volunteers only.’

Nariko hefted a big blue vinyl kitbag from the equipment pile. FDNY MARINE RESCUE stencilled on the side. She unlaced drawstrings and shook out the bag. A tight PVC roll hit the tiled floor with a thump, whipping a dust-plume.

She flipped strap-buckles. She kicked the PVC roll. A grey, inflatable raft unravelled.

‘You’re not seriously going into the tunnels, are you?’ asked Lupe. ‘You’re actually going to paddle around in that shit?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re insane. You heard the guy. If that thing pops a hole while you’re down there, you’ll burn while you drown.’

‘Bet if I come back with some kind of inoculation, you’ll be the first to hold out your arm.’

Nariko screwed a battery pump to the Boston valve embedded in the flaccid prow of the raft. She set the pump running. The compressor hummed and hissed. The air hose bulged and unkinked. Slow inflation. Chambers within the boat’s rubber hull began to plump and expand.

A four-man raft. No outboard.

Nariko unzipped a vinyl case and pulled out two fibreglass oars. She threw the oars to Cloke and Tombes.

‘Ready to break a sweat?’

They propped the oars against the wall and climbed into NBC suits. They pulled on butyl overboots. They pulled on gauntlets.

The crackle of heavy rubber, and the burr of zipper teeth, reminded Nariko of the countless occasions her attendance at a house fire or auto wreck had concluded with a body bag loaded onto an EMT gurney.

She buckled a leather utility belt.

‘Assholes,’ said Lupe. ‘All of you.’

Nariko glanced at Galloway.

‘Feel free to tape her mouth.’

Nariko picked up the Glock. She re-checked the safety, re-checked the chamber. She tucked the gun into her belt.

‘Reckon you’ll need it?’ asked Cloke.

‘No idea what reception we will get. What if the Bellevue team got infected? What if one of them got bitten and turned on his friends? You’ll need something in your hand. There’s a bundle of heavy tools over there by the equipment pile.’

Nariko tucked a hatchet into a hip-ring on her thick leather belt.

‘Pick something heavy, something with a spike. Just don’t sink the boat, all right?’

Cloke stood at the head of the platform steps and looked down into darkness. He held a respirator over his face and tested for visibility.

‘Masks will be useless down there,’ he said. ‘No peripheral vision. Wouldn’t see a damned thing.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Just seal your suits and stay out of the water. Like I said, it’s nasty shit. If you go over the side, you’ll get more than wet.’

Nariko and Tombes stood face to face. They tore strips of duct tape and wrapped them round each wrist and ankle joint. A well-drilled haz-mat protocol.

Fist bump.

‘Good to go.’

‘You folks done this before?’ asked Cloke, trying to break the tension.

‘Suit up?’ said Nariko. ‘Before today? Big chem spill out on the FDR last year. Rush hour. A truck blew a tyre, jackknifed, spilled a bunch of drums across the lower deck. Some kind of noxious, carcinogenic shit. Put the whole city in gridlock. Had to foam down the freeway and mop it up. Closest we ever got to this kind of duty.’

She twisted at the waist and wheeled her arms to make sure the suit was sitting right.

‘This is your mission, but I manage the turn-around, okay?’ said Nariko. ‘We’ll take it as far as we can. But if it goes bad, I’m pulling the plug. I don’t want to hear any argument. My word is final.’

‘Understood.’

She re-checked glove seals. She paused for a moment, distracted by the mildewed Camel poster on the wall beside her. Rich red amid grey dereliction.

‘Do you think we’ll ever see the sun again?’ she asked.

They listened to the steady, white-noise roar of torrential rain, the rumble of thunder and the faint rasp of ragged nails dragged down polythene.

‘Maybe we are better off down here, below ground,’ said Tombes, and crossed himself.

The tunnels beneath Manhattan.