It was a long, dank walk through the old
subway tunnels. The inky blackness got on Cooker's nerves almost as soon as they began
their trek downtown. He tripped and cursed and finally begged Bonner for the luxury of
some light.
"Look, I'll keep the pressure low on
my thrower. I'll just bum off a little mixture. It'll work, you'll see."
"Fine," said Bonner, "but if
I say put it out, it goes out."
"Okay," said Cooker. He pumped up
his cylinders until a lazy cloud of aerated gasoline hazed from his throw pipe. He lit it
with a loud puff.
Bonner had to admit that with the flame
guiding the way they made better time. The tunnels were damp and the only sounds, except
for the heavy clump of three sets of boots, were the scuttling of rats and the constant
drip of the surface water from the ceiling.
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"Fucking raining in here," observed
Starling.
Years of the water had sodden the thick old
wooden railway ties until they had rotted and felt like a mushy old carpet underfoot.
They passed through old stations like the one
they had spent the night in. The flame in Cooker's light reflected off the dull tiles.
Fifty-Ninth Street, Forty-Second Street, Sheridan Square, Chambers Street . . .
They had been walking for two hours when they saw
up ahead that their path was blocked by some huge, indefinite black bulk. It sat squarely
athwart the subway tracks.
"Whassat?" demanded Cooker, sounding
jumpy.
"Relax," said Bonner, "it's just
an old train. We can go around it."
"Damn," said Cooker, "I thought it
was one of them little waddyacallits. Rat shits."
As they passed alongside the old vehicle.
Starling stared up at it, gawking like a kid at a freakshow.
"Can you imagine riding in that thing?
Underground yet?"
Cooker stared also, his eyes roaming over the
great beast. Its sides were painted with faded letters and numbers several feet high.
"Sure had a funny way of writing back then.
I can't make out any of that." He held his torch closer to the sides in an effort to
see better.
"Me neither," said Starling.
They passed the next six cars of the train in
silence. Bonner imagined the train crammed full of people while the huge bulk of the thing
rushed through the
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tunnel. No one would have looked out the window,
no one would have thought twice about travelling at great speed underground. Today that
was incomprehensible, in those old dead days it was commonplace. They had been impatient,
Bonner thought, to get to their stop, their homes, their jobs. Ordinary people . . .
It was said that people lived down here, in the
sunless subway, for years after the attackthey must be the ancestors of the
tunnel-scum. In a few of the stations the gray walls were dark with the smoke of cooking
fires. Bonner looked around him and wondered why they had bothered to try and survive.
What joy could living have brought them down here in this black hell? Sometimes the will
to survive was just too strong, better to let go, to sink into the release of a death you
deserved more than life. They passed through another station: Wall Street. "We're
almost there," said Bonner quietly. "None too soon," said Starling,
relieved. They emerged from the subway via an old emergency exit. They stood for a moment
in the late afternoon sunlight, blinking away the subterranean gloom that seemed to linger
in their eyes.
"The Stormers have a supply house down here,
on the river. An old place that sticks out over the river a ways. They never have more
than two or three men guarding it. One on the door, maybe two more inside. I want them
brought down quiet. There's probably another forty of fifty Stormers on the island and I'd
just as soon not let them know we're coming." "Amen," said Starling.
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"Why the guard so light?" asked
Cooker suspiciously.
"They never expect any trouble in New
York."
"Yeah," said Cooker
sarcastically, "who'd be that crazy?"
They waited an hour or so for night to
fall. Slowly the darkness rolled in like a sluggish tide, erasing the desolate scene
around them. The end of the island looked like a giant scythe had cut through the tall
buildings clustered there. Hundreds of tall buildings had been sliced off just above
street level, the streets having been turned into ravines of rubble.
Bonner judged that it was dark enough to
make their move.
The Stormer on the front door couldn't have
made it easier. He sat in front of the rickety old buildingit had a funny little
tower at one endtending a fire. They could see the outline of the man clearly and
his giant shadow cast behind him by the flickering flames.
"Starling," whispered Bonner,
"can you take him?"
"No problem." Starling slipped
the explosive charge out of one of his arrows, inserted the shaft into the bowstring and
pulled it taut. The Stormer suddenly stood upright holding his hands out over the flames
of the fire to absorb the heat into the palms of his hands.
Starling let the arrow fly. The shaft
pierced the man's chest. From where they stood they could hear the heavy thud as the arrow
pinned the stormer to the wooden door behind him. He hung against it, his arms and legs
hanging awkwardly like a broken doll.
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They headed for the door and as they
entered Starling yanked the arrow from the man's chest and wiped it on the Stonner's
pants. He couldn't afford to waste a single shaft. Carefully he slipped the charge back
into its resting place behind the point.
Bonner slipped two of his knives from his
holster and took a single tentative step into the building. The floor creaked slightly.
Off somewhere ahead of him he could hear the murmur of voices. Bonner pushed on, stopping
every few seconds to listen, guiding himself by the sound of the voices. A faint light
showed under the door ahead of him. He moved close, until he could hear the conversation
of the men within clearly:
"Well, if he said that, he's full of
shit."
"Maybe, but you tell him."
"I will too," said the Stormer
vehemently.
Bonner pushed open the door. Two Stormers
sat at a table eating from rough earthen bowls. One was just putting a spoon into his
mouth when he saw Bonner. The other man was hunched over his chow like a dog. He froze,
the spoon at his lips. His companion, his back to Bonner, kept eating and talking.
"I'm not afraid of him. Hell,
no." Just then he glanced up at his partner in time to see one of Bonner's wide flat
knives pierce his dinner companion's throat. The man fell from his chair, a fine spray of
blood, like dew, pumped out over the meager food on the table.
The remaining Stormer wheeled, jumping for
the
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old Marlin .22 bolt action rifle he had been
careless enough to lean against the wall beyond easy reach. It wouldn't have done him any
good though. He was as good as dead. A second of Bonner's blades flashed through the air
like a flying fish. It sliced into the man's heart stopping it mid-pump.
Starling and Cooker were already rummaging
amongst the Stormers' enormous stores. In a series of small rooms beyond the guard room
they found the supplies of the entire New York garrison. The first room held firearms.
Housed in old gym lockers the three men found row upon row of guns. Starling drew one out.
"Hey, Bonner, you know this weapon?"
"Yeah. H&R rimfire."
"Any good?"
"Not bad. This is better." He pulled
down a sleek Browning automatic .22 Magnum pump rifle.
"Mine," said Starling.
"Take it. But we're going to need something
with a little high rate of fire. Automatic, semi-automatic but keep it simple. We can't
afford anything that jams."
"Guns," snorted Cooker and loped off to
another room.
"Figure they're totin' M-16's on the
island?"
"Or something pretty close." Bonner
began methodically searching the room. Guns and ammunition spilled out of every locker.
Pistols, rifles, shotguns, even air-gunseverything from worn-out old pieces that the
poorest street worker would carry to sophisti-
107
cated, finely made shotguns with delicate
engraving on the matchplates, the kind of gun a rich man would have carried for a genteel
weekend's shooting.
Bonner broke the lock on the metal trunk and
found what he was looking for. Lying there were ten of the ugliest little guns he had ever
seen. They were mean looking stunted semi-automatics, the kind of gun a man braced against
taut stomach muscles and let fly. If you got in the way the bullets would skitter across
your body carving you into a bloody mess.
The guns had ugly green plastic stocks supporting
a long narrow barrel, so needle-fine, the whole gun looked like some weird little sea
creature. A small grip protruded from below the barrel and a plastic clip jutted down,
just below the trigger.
"Starling." Bonner held up the gun. It
was light, maybe six or seven pounds.
Starling whistled low. "What is that
thing?"
"Steyr AUG." Bonner read from a plate
on the stock.
"Ever heard of it?"
"Nope, but I think I'm going to take a
couple along."
"You can see right through the clip. It's
transparent."
"You'll always know how many shots you have
left." With sure fingers, Bonner broke the little gun down. Stripped, it amounted to
six simple pieces. It was just the gun he was looking for, simple, reliable and fast. A
man could get killed if he relied on the fancy stuff, the temperamental equipment that
people
108
in the old world thought they needed. Keep
it simple and you stay alive.
"How many rounds?" asked
Starling.
"Looks like forty."
"Grab me one."
Bonner picked up two of the weapons and
found a dusty old suitcase and quickly emptied all of the ammunition into it. He couldn't
tell how much he had. A lot, though, two, maybe three thousand rounds. It should see them
through the island and beyond. If they made it.
Cooker had found a room stuffed with food.
They found him there scooping cherry jelly out of a dusty jar. With two dirty fingers he
shovelled the dark red slime into his mouth, staining his lips with the sweet red juice.
"This stuff is great," he said,
slobbering slightly.
"Pig," said Starling.
"Hey," said Bonner, "found
any candy in here?"
"Got a sweet tooth, Bonner?"
Bonner located a couple of jars of honey
and grabbed himself some jam from Cooker's haul.
"Hey," said the gas-hound
indignantly.
"Plenty for everybody," said
Bonner, stowing away his loot. It would please Dorca. Assuming he ever saw Dorca again.
Starling appeared in the doorway. He held
up both hands, each held a bundle. He grinned.
"Dynamite," he said happily.