Mike McQuay - Escape From New York

The Snake put up his hands. “Never mind,” he said, “I don’t want to know.”

The doctor was walking back to the table, back behind Plissken. He had the tubes in his hands. They were attached to the machine, stretching back and bouncing like monstrous rubber bands.

“We’re talking about the survival of the human race, Plissken,” Hauk said, but it lacked conviction. “Something you don’t give a shit about.”

Cronenberg spoke from behind. “I’m going to inject you,” he said dryly. “It’ll sting for a second or two.”

The Snake didn’t have a chance to complain. He didn’t even have a chance to ask the doctor what was going to be coming out of those two rubber tubes. The man just placed them quickly on either side of his neck and pushed a button. The tubes were compressed air guns. He felt a bite, then a pop, and for just a second it felt like someone was pinching the hell out of his neck. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the pain stopped. Cronenberg removed the tubes, and Plissken brought his hands up to feel the spots. They were tender to the touch.

He heard Hauk sigh and looked up at the man. His face had relaxed somewhat, as if some good and positive thing had just happened. “That’s it, Plissken,” he said.

Cronenberg’s voice was cold as January behind him, “Tell him,” the man said.

“Tell me what?” Plissken snapped.

Hauk moved across the room, almost as if he were physically needing to put distance between himself and Plissken. “About that idea you’ve got about turning the Gulffire around 180 degrees and flying off to Canada.”

Plissken jerked his head around to Cronenberg. The man’s face was pasty white. His eye began twitching madly under the patch. “What did you do to me?” he demanded.

“My idea,” Hauk said from the other side of the small office. He was puffed up, trying to look big and mean. He was out of practice. “Something we’ve been fooling around with. Two microscopic capsules lodged in your arteries. They’re already starting to dissolve.”

He took his eyes from Plissken and paced his corner of the room in a tight circle. “In twenty-two hours, the cores will completely melt. Inside the cores are small heat-sensitive charges. Not a large explosive, about the size of a pinhead. Just enough to open up both your arteries.”

He stopped walking, turned his head and stared hard at the Snake. “I’d say you’d be dead in ten, fifteen seconds.”

The pain charged through Plissken’s eye, and he was off the table, jumping toward Hauk. He hit the man hard, hand in a death grip on his throat. The momentum carried them back to bang into a concrete wall. Hauk groaned loudly.

“Take ’em out!” Plissken screamed, squeezing hard on Hauk’s neck.

Eyes bulging, breath caught in his throat, Hauk had his pistol out, jammed into Plissken’s stomach. But the Snake was well beyond that. He’d go gladly if he could take Bob Hauk along with him.

Plissken was vaguely aware of Doctor Cronenberg beside him. The man was shaking visibly, mouth working. He was talking. Plissken picked it up with half an ear, then listened to it all.

“They’re protected by the cores!” Cronenberg was yelling. “But fifteen minutes before the last hour is up we can neutralize the charges with an x-ray.” His hands were on the Snake’s arm, touching, gently touching. “We can stop it, Snake. We can stop it!”

Plissken looked at a gagging Hauk, then at Cronenberg’s deep worried eyes. He released the man’s throat.

Deep, husky sounds came from Hauk, as he staggered away from the gray wall, hand up on his throat, massaging. He holstered his gun.

Plissken tried to swallow the anger back down to the boiler within him. He looked at the watch. It read: 22:47:01.

Hauk was taking deep breaths. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “We’ll burn out the charges… if you have the President.”

Plissken glared at him. “What if I’m late?”

Hauk straightened his tie. “No more Hartford Summit. No more Snake Plissken.”

Plissken bent down and picked up his leather jacket, draping it over his arm. He was calm again, thinking, adjusting. He stared fire at Hauk. “When I get back,” he said, “I’m going to kill you.”

The Commissioner accepted that at face value. He even smiled slightly. “The Gulffire’s waiting,” he said.

COUNTDOWN 22:13:36, 35, 34…

The rain had dissipated to a fine mist, the kind that you never really feel until you run your hands through your hair and come away wet. It was chill, autumn chill, and the misty rain seemed to act as a coating, sealing the chill right into the bones.

Plissken walked alone down the deserted airstrip toward the distant hangar, the hangar lights casting long, shimmering reflections on the lonely puddles beneath his feet.

There wasn’t a blackbelly in sight. Normally, that would have made him happy, but the fact that he was left unguarded made him feel that they accepted him as one of them. He couldn’t think of a single thing more disgusting to him in the whole world. It also tended to reinforce Hauk’s assertion that they actually had planted bombs within him.

There he was, Snake Plissken, going back off to war. Of course, he had never stopped going off to war. Every hour of every day of his life, Snake Plissken fought his battles. Sometimes they were internal, and sometimes they were wild and freewheeling like at the Federal Reserve. But the feelings were just the same.

None of it made any sense to him. What was one President more or less? What was one summit meeting? It was a President who decorated him after Leningrad, a President who thought he could buy his love and loyalty with a cheap slug of bronze and a bit of colored ribbon. It meant nothing to him. Less than nothing.

That was a different President, of course. How many had there been since-four, five? It didn’t matter; there were plenty more where those came from. When the medals didn’t buy him off, they offered him a high position in the fledgling USPF. When that didn’t work, they cut him loose, just gave him a discharge and sent him home.

Home.

Orange fire.

He felt the anger bolt through him and fought it back down. He needed his wits about him now. He came up to the hangar, pushed open the huge, sheet-metal door and went inside.

It sometimes occurred to him that maybe he was crazy like the rest of them. Although crazy people, it seemed, would not realize that they were crazy. Everything would seem perfectly logical and natural to them. That was the one feeling that made him think he was still shuffling the right deck. He could look around him and know, really know, how out of control the whole business was.

The inside of the hangar was lit with that creeping neon disease. The glider sat in the middle of the monstrous hangar, its only occupant. He crossed the cement floor, footsteps echoing loudly. Two cops were under the plane, taking the blocks out from in front of the wheels.

He got up to the machine and felt his insides surge. It had been a long time. The Gulffire was sleek and bullet-shaped. It was painted slick black and the neon script reflected in lazy, distorted patterns off its contours. The wings were stubby. The jet pack stuck a bit out of the tail like some kind of metal beehive. The canopy was black, flat black. It was all instruments, no eyeballing. He was surprised to find himself getting excited about flying again. He had thought he was through with it. But old soldiers never die…

“You Plissken?” came a voice from under the glider. The voice got caught in the echo and rebounded off the high walls until it sounded like a whole choir shouting down at him.

“What’s it to you?” Plissken returned, softly enough to avoid the echo.