William Dietz - A Hole in the Sky

Some of the surrounding buildings were still reasonably intact. But one of them appeared to have been stomped by a gigantic foot, suggesting that a three-hundred-foot-tall Leviathan might have passed through the area at some point, leaving a path of destruction in its wake. As Voss scanned the cityscape from left to right he saw the tail end of a SRPA VTOL sticking out of the side of a skyscraper. One of hundreds that had been shot down trying to defend the city.

A frayed banner, with the words “GIGANTIC SALE” emblazoned across it, hung from the building next to it. And a barely visible flagpole could be seen jutting out from the second floor of the high-rise on the opposite side of the street. “There it is,” he said. “At two o’clock.”

Kawecki turned slightly and made a minute adjustment to his glasses. “Check! There’s Old Glory! Right where she’s supposed to be. It looks like Lucy is still alive. Thank God for that.”

Voss nodded. Like Kawecki, he had spoken with the agent named Lucy by radio, but never met her. And that was before they left Arkansas some three months earlier. A lot can happen in ninety days. “If you’re ready, let’s go. We’re supposed to meet her at the Hotel Constantine. My guess is that she’s watching us from one of those buildings.”

“Roger that,” Kawecki said, as he fastened his binoculars into place. “All right, everybody, let’s move out. And don’t forget to eyeball the windows all around. A stink with an Auger could do lots of damage from up there. Over.”

Voss heard a crunching sound under his boots as he followed Lang and Kawecki across a field of fresh snow. He knew the stinks could follow and wondered if they would. How many humans remained in New York anyway? Enough to make tracks a common sight? Or were signs of habitation so rare as to merit an immediate follow-up? The politician didn’t know but figured he was about to find out.

Lang must have been thinking about it too, because he made it a point to walk on bare concrete in the few places where that was possible, and cut through stores when it made sense. Fifteen minutes later they slipped through the front door of a run-down hostelry called the Constantine. It was a residential hotel from the look of it, which made sense given all the factories and warehouses in the area. An imposing reception desk stood off to the left, backed by a key rack, and a framed list of “House Rules.”

Broken glass crackled under Rigg’s boots as he walked over to the reception desk and slapped the dome-shaped bell that sat next to a black telephone. It made a lonely ringing sound.

Voss eyed the lobby’s worn chairs, the shoe-shine stand, and the magazine kiosk that was decorated with cigarette advertising. Taking a closer look, he saw that a two-year-old copy of Time magazine was still for sale. The cover photo consisted of an open-mouthed Steelhead. The caption read: “What do they want?”

The answer, as it turned out, was everything .

Voss’s thoughts were interrupted when Chu said, “We’ve got company,” and a woman walked in off the street. She was decked out in a fashionable fur hat, a pink ski jacket, and a bandolier of red shotgun shells. The rest of her outfit consisted of black stirrup pants and fur-trimmed boots. A Winchester pump gun was tucked under her right arm. She looked like a socialite on a skeet shoot. “Hi,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Lucy. Welcome to the Big Apple. Which one of you is President Voss?”

Voss stepped forward. The woman in front of him appeared to be in her early thirties. Blond curls peeked out from under the cap. Her wide-set eyes were China blue and her skin was alabaster white.

Lucy was a beautiful woman, or had been back before something ripped her face open and left a jagged scar that started high on the right side of her face. The white line zigzagged down across a softly rounded cheek to the left corner of her mouth. The stitches looked like the work of an amateur. Voss could tell that she knew what he was thinking as her chin came up and her eyes narrowed. “I’m Tom Voss,” he replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for agreeing to help us.”

“You’re the one who deserves thanks,” Lucy replied sincerely as her eyes darted from face to face. “Odds are that the stinks know you’re here by now, so it’s best to keep moving.”

Lucy led the team out onto Canal Street, and from there to Varick, where they took a right. Voss would have felt very exposed if it hadn’t been for the snow. It was falling more thickly now, reducing visibility to little more than twenty feet, and erasing the team’s tracks within a matter of minutes.

Warehouses crowded in all around as Varick merged with Broadway. A short time later the party turned left onto Chambers, where they passed a building that appeared to have been pulverized by a giant foot. Then it was time to stop and check their back trail. The lack of visibility cut both ways. If the Chimera couldn’t see the humans, the reverse was true as well.

“Okay,” Lucy said, as she used a boot to scrape some snow aside. “See that manhole cover? If one of you big, strong men would be kind enough to lift it up I would appreciate it. You’ll have to remove your packs in order to drop through, however.”

It took the better part of ten minutes to lift the cover out of the way, send two men down the steel ladder, and drop the packs through the hole. Then, once the rest of the party was safely belowground, it was Mason’s job to ease the metal lid back into position. With that accomplished, it was time to gear up again.

Lucy was holding a flare. The light threw black shadows up onto curved walls. “We’re in a storm drain,” she informed them as the men shouldered their packs. “We use them to get around. The stinks know that, so they send hunter-killer teams down to look for us, but they pay a high price for doing so. Keep your eyes peeled and remember, pipes come in from every direction.”

“And if we get into a fight, be careful where you aim,” Kawecki added. “We have enough problems without shooting each other.”

Like the rest of the team, Voss was armed with two primary weapons. Given the situation, he thought it best to exchange the M5A2 carbine for a cut-down Rossmore stored in the scabbard strapped to his pack. With the shotgun at the ready he followed Lucy, Lang, and Kawecki out of the collector manifold and into a large pipe. They had to walk bent over, which not only was uncomfortable but would make it damned hard to fight if attacked.

Lucy led them through a series of left- and right-hand turns. Voss tried to memorize the route but soon gave up. It was too damned complicated.

A short time later, the team arrived at a point where explosives had been used to open a side passageway. The tunnel was about ten feet long. Heavy beams had been used to shore up the passageway, but the work had obviously been carried out by amateurs, so Voss had no desire to linger. Lucy directed the team into a subway tunnel. “We’re close,” she promised. “Now stay together. I wouldn’t want to lose anyone.”

It was good advice, and Voss was careful to keep the interval between Kawecki and himself short as they followed a set of rusting tracks past a train and the empty platform beyond. Voss had been to New York on at least a dozen occasions back before the war. He wondered if he had stood at that very station, his mind focused on an upcoming meeting, blissfully unaware of what the future had in store.

Suddenly Voss’s thoughts were jerked back to the present as Alvarez yelled a warning: “Drones!” Each of the beetle-shaped machines was equipped with a headlight, and the beams crisscrossed each other as a loud thrumming noise sounded and a swarm of at least twenty Drones swept in to attack the humans.