Mike McQuay - Escape From New York

He turned back to the map, his finger hurrying across its face. He stopped down south, down by the bay. He stabbed the map viciously with his finger. “Top of the World Trade Center,” he said. “Bingo! That’s got to be it”

Maggie smiled at him. Sometimes she thought that she was almost in love with Brain Hellman. “So, now what?” she asked.

Hauk walked into the control bunker and threw the briefcase on a table. Rehme turned white. Prather began to get excited. Hauk could see by the man’s face that he was already thinking of ways that he could get credit for the recovery. Prather should have looked more closely at the Commissioner’s face.

Neither of them touched the briefcase. Neither could bear that particular strain. Bob Hauk frowned; he had to do it all himself.

Not a word had been spoken. There were no words. Hauk sighed deeply and reached into the satchel. Extracting a piece of paper, he sat himself on the edge of the table and read it aloud: “Amnesty for all prisoners in New York City in exchange for President. Fifty Ninth Street Bridge. Tomorrow. Twelve noon. No bullshit or he’s dead.”

“Where’s the tape?” Prather asked, getting down to the heart of the matter.

Hauk fixed him with cold eyes. “It’s not here.”

“Well, then…”

“There’s more,” Hauk said. Reaching into the case, he pulled out a pair of infrared goggles and threw them on the table. Each lens had a nail stuck through it. Hauk felt as if he were wearing those goggles.

“They’re Plissken’s,” Rehme said softly.

Prather immediately pulled into his hard politician’s shell. His voice got domineering and hateful. “So much for your man, Hauk.”

Hauk wanted to grab him, wanted to go right across the table and rip his razored tongue right out of his mealy mouth. No one would blame him if he did, either. But he didn’t. That would have made him too much like the other uniformed maniacs. Instead, he said: “Warm up the choppers. We’re going in.”

He watched Rehme bolt out the door. He watched the entire bunker spring to life with merely a word. He felt strange inside. Dead.

EARLY EVENING

Plissken saw himself at the bottom of a deep, dry well-darkness all around, a pinpoint of light far overhead. A voice seemed to be calling to him down the hole, beckoning him to climb.

He reached out his arms and felt the walls on either side of him. They were slick, oozing slime. It seemed a lot easier and more comfortable to just stay where he was.

The voice called to him again. Curious, he decided to check it out. The bucket rope was hanging down, dangling in the middle of the hole. He felt for it, found it with his hands. Taking a deep breath, he jumped as high as he could and grabbed hold, using his feet to help him on the side walls.

It was a hell of a climb, and more than once he wanted to just chuck it away and go back down to rest, but the voice was getting louder, more insistent.

He pulled and strained and finally made it to the top. The light was bright, blinding. It hurt his good eye and made his bad eye throb uncontrollably, setting his head on fire.

He focused. An ugly face with a crooked nose and breath that smelled of kerosene filled all of his vision. The face was smiling obscenely.

“Let’s go, Snake,” it said.

He shook his head and looked around. He was lying on a table in a large, wrecked dining room. The place had been gingerbread house ornate at one time, but the gingerbread of ancient times had gotten stale and crumbled away.

Gypsies surrounded him. They were all grinning widely, nodding their shaggy, moustached faces.

Plissken tried to sit up, but the pain in his head nearly blacked him out again. Shutting his eye tight, he opened it slowly, letting the pain seep in. He looked down at his leg. The arrow was gone, a dirty rag tightly wound took its place. His pants leg was soaked with blood. The blood was dry. He realized that he had been there for a long time. His shirt was gone. He was cold.

“Come on,” said the man who had woke him up.

They were levelling crossbows at him, fearful of him even in his condition. A tribute, he supposed. Somebody poked him with an ax handle. He was kitten weak, barely able to hold himself upright. Putting up his hands, he feebly tried to ward them off. It was then that he noticed that the countdown clock was gone from his wrist.

“Get up!” the man said.

They pulled him to his feet, but it was like walking in a dream, a hazy, pain-filled dream. Besides the concussion that he must have surely had, he had probably lost enough blood to qualify him for an economy rate at the donor bank. They pushed him toward the door.

Plissken wobbled through the door. His leg hurt, but he could put some weight on it if he just concentrated on the incredible pain in his head. Small consolation.

They were in a long, dark hallway. It was a wreck, totally junked and of the same style as the dining room. He heard a rumbling sound in the distance, but couldn’t quite make it out.

A hand shoved him roughly along.

He started to turn, to breathe fire at them. But he saw something that made the words burn in his own throat. Something was coming from the other direction. It was two Gypsies bearing a stretcher.

As it went past, he glanced down at it. They were carrying a man, in pieces. It looked like he had been literally torn apart. The sound came up again. It was cheering.

Dying light filtered in tiny shafts through some high ceiling transoms, but he couldn’t tell how late it was. “How about the time?” he mumbled to his captors.

They all laughed. “Time to die, Snake,” one of them said.

The sounds got louder the farther they walked. Finally, they came to the end of the hall and turned a corner, walking directly into a stentorian wall of sound.

The cheering came from thousands of voices. They were in the huge lobby of Grand Central Station, with its cloud-scraping ceiling, wide open. The place was filled with chairs, and all the chairs were filled by gross human imitators yelling and stomping their feet. It wasn’t just Gypsies, but every gang was represented: Africks, Low Riders, Chinkas, Dollies, Octoes, all were there.

The cheering increased in volume as more and more of them saw Plissken enter the room. It rang up to the ceiling and rained back down. The Snake felt as if he were on the inside of a bell.

They kept pushing him along through the frenzied crowds. They reached for him as he went by, hands everywhere, but the guards kept him from falling into those hands. They had apparently planned something a lot more enjoyable.

The smell in the room was bad, all sweat and belly gas, the granddaddy of all locker rooms. He breathed through his mouth. They kept moving him toward the center of the room. There was something there, lit by torches. He got close enough to see. It was a ring, a boxing ring. He got all the way up on it. The canvas was completely covered with blood.

He was pushed through the crudely strung ropes, into the ring itself. He glanced around the sea of faces that leered up at him-not an ounce of sympathy in the whole lot. His name had apparently lost its magic. His eyes drifted upwards. The Duke sat in a special box, surrounded by his lieutenants. He had Plissken’s rifle strapped on his back and he wore a big, contented smile on his face.

Noise came from behind him. Someone else was being led up to the ring, and the cheering increased in volume again. Then there was a chant, a name being called over and over.

“Slag. Slag. Slag.”

The man climbed through the ropes. He was huge, the biggest man Plissken had ever seen. His muscles were toned and rigid, oiled to glistening in the torchlight. He was an ox, a machine. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He wore black tights and shiny knee boots.