Mike McQuay - Escape From New York

Plissken put a squeezing hand on the man’s shoulder. The crazies were nearly on top of them. “Let’s go,” he hissed.

The cabbie, smiling again, picked up one of the bottles off the seat. He touched his smoker to the rag plug. It burst into flames, licking the cab ceiling. He held the bottle out to Plissken, shaking it.

“This stuff’s gold around here, you know,” he said.

The crazies hit the car, on the run. Shaking, clawing, reaching. The cabbie casually tossed the bottle out the window and it exploded in their midst, flaring fire.

The front ranks went up in flames and the smell of burning flesh stood out even above their slime stench. The cabbie hit the gas pedal, and the car screeched away from the conflagration, swerving on down the street.

Plissken watched the orange fire disappear out the glassless rear window, then sank back gratefully in the seat. The aches and pains began to creep up his body the moment he relaxed. He took some more speed out of his pouch and ate it.

The cab was moving at top speed down the deserted streets, the driver taking obvious delight in being able to do things he could have never done when the city was a city. The buildings lay in ruins all around them, crumbled, decimated.

“When’d you get in, Snake?” he asked over his shoulder. “I didn’t know they caught you.”

He took a corner too fast, screeching around, back end fishtailing. Plissken fell over partway on the seat. He was already forgetting about the crazies and remembering how short his time on Planet Earth was going to be if he didn’t find the President.

The driver was still talking. “Snake Plissken in my cab,” he said proudly. “Wait’ll I tell Eddie.”

He turned around, grinning quickly. “Hold on, Snake!”

Turning the wheel hard, they swung into an alley, the cab going up on two wheels, nearly toppling. The cabbie was laughing, enjoying the hell out of himself. Plissken wondered if he would have been better off back with the crazies.

“Gotta take a shortcut to get out of here,” the man was saying. “You can run into real trouble on the streets.” He shook his head. “Night before a food drop, hell! Forget it.” He started laughing again. “Hey, Snake. Watch this!”

They sped through the alley, then took another hard right, throwing Plissken to the other side of the seat. His gratitude was slipping quickly away.

They tore through the empty streets, through the darkened towers of glass and stone.

“See her take that turn?” the cabbie asked, and his voice was high-pitched and excited, charged by his own mad adrenal glands. “Hell, I had this very cab before I got sent up. I locked her up before they walled us in. When they sent me back in, she started right up, like nothin’ changed.”

“And I’m tryin’ soft

And I’m tryin’ hard

Sneakin’ round to catch ’em

All off guard

Can I do it anonymously?

Can I do it?

You just wait and see.”

“Three years,” he kept saying. “Three fuckin’ years, and she started right up. What a beauty.”

Plissken was through with it. He just didn’t have the time. “Hey,” he said.

The cabbie jumped, startled. It was almost as if he’d forgotten that Plissken was back there. “What were you doin’ back there. Snake?”

“Looking for somebody,” Plissken answered coldly.

“Shoulda asked me,” he said. “I know everybody in this town. Been driving this cab for thirty years. This very same cab. Did I tell you that she started right up. After three years, she…”

Plissken jammed his rifle into the back of the cabbie’s neck. “Now, just shut up for a minute!” he said angrily. “I’m gonna ask you a question, and you got one second to answer.” He took a deep, rasping breath. “Where’s the President?”

“The Duke’s got him,” the man answered matter of factly. “Hell, everybody knows that. Sure, the Duke’s got him. Gee, Snake, you don’t have to put a gun to my head. I’ll tell you.”

“Who’s the Duke?”

The man’s head turned sideways, eyebrows up in surprise. “The Duke of New York!” he said. “The big man. A-number-one, that’s who.”

“I want to meet this Duke.”

The cabbie started chuckling again. “You can’t meet the Duke. Are you crazy? Nobody gets to meet the Duke, he’s the big guy. You meet him once, then you’re dead.”

Plissken pushed the rifle barrel a little harder into the man’s neck. “How do I find him?”

The cabbie shrugged his hands off the wheel. “Well, I know a guy who might help you. He’s a little strange, though.” The man stopped talking long enough to take another drag on his cigarette. “Gee,” he said at last. “You didn’t have to use your piece on me. I woulda told you.”

“One more thing,” the Snake said.

“Yeah?”

“Would you please slow this son of a bitch down?”

150TH ST. MEMORIAL LIBRARY

17:10:19, 18, 17…

Plissken watched the streets as they drove. The cabbie droned without thought or meaning, talking in laborious detail about lube jobs and oil changes. The streets seemed infinite, caught as they were in the middle of their tangles. Twisting stone paths winding a petrified forest. An army, a hundred armies, could hide within those hollow trees.

They cut through a narrow alley, as scrawny rats fled the jabs of their headlights. Then, about halfway along the dark pathway, they stopped.

“Well, here we are,” the cabbie said.

“Where?”

“Here. Come on.”

The man creaked open his door and hefted his bulk out of a broken seat that had cradled him for those thirty long years. He looked up and down, hitched up his grease-stained pants and smiled.

“Can’t leave her on the street,” he said. “Usually don’t leave her at all. But you’re a special case, Snake.”

Plissken climbed cautiously out of the back seat and followed the cabbie down the length of the alley and out. They were moving toward a huge stone building that was relatively intact. Wide stone steps led up to the big, iron doors. Cement lions crouched by the steps, guarding this stone palace in the stone jungle. They started up the steps. It was a public building, a library.

“It’s okay. Snake,” the cabbie said. “Better neighborhood. You can relax.”

Plissken thought about the time bombs planted in his arteries. “No thanks,” he replied.

They got to the top of the steps and the cabbie banged on the iron door with the flat of his hand. It echoed hollowly, like knocking on a huge bell. He waited a few seconds, then did it again.

He smiled at Plissken, his eyes gleaming slits. “They got a great place here. Like a fortress.”

“They?” Plissken returned.

A voice from the other side, female, said, “Who is is?”

The cabbie rolled his eyes and cocked a thumb at the door. “It’s me!” he yelled, loud enough to wake up the dead-or at least the walking dead.

“Who’s me?” returned the muffled voice.

“Cabbie!”

“What do you want?”

“Somebody to see Brain,” he said officiously. “It’s important.”

“Go away,” the voice returned.

Plissken grimaced and started looking for accessible windows.

“It’s Snake Plissken,” the cabbie returned, then winked in the Snake’s direction.

There was a pause. The magic words, the passport to the asylum. Sounds, scratching sounds, came through the door. Locks slid, bolts scraped. The door opened a crack. An eye peered through.

“You’re Plissken?” came the voice connected to the eye.

“He wants to see Brain,” the cabbie said.

“Why?”

Plissken shoved the cabbie aside and got eye to eye through the door crack. “I want to meet the Duke.”