Escape From New York

XXIII

0:23:24, 23.: 22…

They came up on the bridge from underneath. It crossed above the East River Drive in a beehive of girders and pilings before taking on the river. They eased off the road and Plissken turned into the center of the web of girders, stopping on the other side of some big ones. He cut the lights.

“Come on,” the President said. “Come on!”

“Take it easy, Mister President,” Plissken said without looking at the man. “You in a hurry or something?”

They saw the headlights of the pursuit, then heard the roar of the engines. They were coming through the girder forest, too. The Snake waited until the lead car, the Duke’s Cadillac, got right up on them. Then he pulled on the lights and leaned heavily on the horn.

The car slammed on the brakes, and the one behind plowed right into it. The third car smashed into the second with the cry of rending metal. The fourth car fishtailed, backending a girder in a shower of sparks.

Plissken hit the gas and the gears at the same time and took off. Cat and mouse in the girders seemed like the thing to do. He decided to play some more.

He checked the rear view. The Duke’s car and the last car had manged to get themselves going again and were back chasing them. The other two were done for.

Pulling around another set of girders, Plissken did the same thing. The Duke’s car was coming, moving cautiously this time. The other car was right behind. Plissken let the Duke pass, then took off again, smashing into the front end of the other car, spinning it away into the pilings.

The Duke was not to be denied. That’s what made him Duke. He wheeled around and was behind them again, billowing dust drifting foglike in his headlights.

Plissken gave it all. Wheeling a corner, he smashed through several barricades, showering wood and splinters back at the windshield. He was on the underpass, rolling up to the bridge.

The Duke came on him, tracing his path, and when Plissken reached the bridge above, he could see the other’s headlights speeding up the ramp.

Plissken stopped and looked across the span of steel and concrete. It was partially lit by searchlights set into the wall that rose up from it on the other side. The light was stark white, bleached. The bridge was a battlefield, charted and blackened from previous escape attempts. It was littered with large concrete chunks and the burned-out shells of cars that didn’t make it through the mine field. Large metal spikes were set in rows and spaced along the length of the bridge, the steelpointy teeth in the mouth of destruction. A large mound of dirt, all that remained of the first barricade, sat directly in front of them.

Plissken took a breath. He heard the sound of the Duke’s engine whining up behind them. Locking his hands on the steering wheel, he gunned the motor.

“Easy!” Cabbie yelled. “My cab!”

The car moved, winding out, and they hit the barricade at full speed, flopping over the top to slam down hard on the other side. Everyone grunted with the jolt; Cabbie began moaning softly.

Plissken was off. The bridge was a nightmare of twists and turns. He went as fast as he dared, steering around the obstacles that blocked him off. It was easy at first, the mine fields being defined by the dead cars that found them the quick way. The farther along, the more difficult it became. There was a noise behind them. The Duke had jumped the barricade and was hurrying to catch up.

Hellman held the diagram out in front of him, desperately scanning its face with a moving finger.

“You gotta slow down, Snake,” Cabbie kept saying. “Don’t hurt my baby.”

Hellman was pointing frantically at the paper. “I think there’s three mines ahead…”

“You think? ” Maggie said from the back seat.

Brain waved her off. “Just stay to the left, then jog right”

There was very little room anywhere. Abutments and latticed railings defined the outer edges, much of that already blown away. He skimmed the left, barely scraping the cement limits, knocking loosened bridge pieces over the edge.

Cabbie was reaching for the wheel, trying to take control of the car. “You’re pushin’ her too hard!” he yelled.

Plissken shoved him aside and looked quickly at his watch. He had ten and a half minutes left until his appointment with Death.

The car barricades had thinned to nothing, virgin territory. There were fewer holes in the bridge fabric, but more spikes. Hellman tried to hold back the cabbie and read the map at the same time.

“Okay,” he said quickly. “Here they come.”

The headlights reflected rows of spikes and an overturned pole coming right at them. Plissken hit the brakes and swerved around them. Cabbie was screaming.

Suddenly-a roar. The cab was lifted from behind with the force of a mine explosion. They skidded, out of control, into the side of the bridge, then bounced back, turning in circles. Finally, they shuddered to a stop. The cab was done for.

“Out of the car!” Plissken yelled, and they were piling out the doors.

“I said jog right,” Hellman kept saying.

Cabbie wasn’t getting out of the car. Plissken leaned in to him. The man sat there, huge grin on his face, dead in the seat. Not a mark on him. His car was all he had. When it died, he must have decided to go with it. The Snake tousled the dead man’s hair, then let him slump against the dashboard. It was the best coffin that Cabbie could ask for.

Plissken turned to look down the bridge. The Duke’s headlights were coming at them, steady, unrelenting. Plissken was running again, ignoring the agony in his leg.

“Here!” Rehme shouted. “Over here.”

Hauk and the Secretary rushed across the bunker to stand beside him. He was looking at the gridded wall map with the flashing light. Rehme was holding a headset up to his ear without putting it on. “It’s wall station nineteen,” he said. “They spotted two cars on the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge.”

Hauk looked at the map light that marked the station. “Is it Plissken?” he asked.

Rehme shrugged with his tired eyes. “Taxicab and a Cadillac,” he returned, trying to keep the catch out of his voice. “The taxi hit a mine. Four people on foot.”

Hauk looked at Prather just to read the man’s face. “Ten minutes,” the man said, and Hauk couldn’t figure exactly whether that was supposed to be good or bad.

He turned back to Rehme. “Get a jeep with a winch over there, fast.”

Running back to his previous station, he picked up the two-way and barked into it: “Cronenberg. Get over to wall station nineteen. They’re coming across the bridge.”

He put down the radio, and he felt his insides jump. Maybe he had something left in there after all. Without thought, he was out the door and running for the heli-pads.

They used the only resource left to them. They ran. They ran from the Duke, from his whining engine that wanted to eat them up. They ran from the City of Death.

There was a sound behind Plissken, a roar. He turned in time to see Brain Hellman flying through the air, tossed away by the unfeeling force of instantaneous combustion beneath his feet. No sound issued from him. He was a dead thing and would be left behind with the rest of the dead and dying.

Plissken stopped and turned. Hellman’s body hit the ground ten feet from where he started. Maggie had been knocked down by the blast, and she was moving along the ground, crawling toward Brain’s body. In the distance, he could still see what was left of the yellow cab with the grinning man inside. Leningrad. It was Leningrad all over again, and he was saving a man who nobody cared about for purposes that made no rational sense.

The President was still running. The Duke was closing in. He called to the woman. “Maggie! Keep moving!” He could see she wasn’t going to. She had defined her priorities. He looked at his lifeclock-0:07:49, 48, 47.

Maggie crawled to Brain. He was lying on his back, eyes closed. He could be sleeping. The fright wasn’t on his face anymore. There was peace there now, a contentment that she’d never seen before.

She embraced his inert form. “Oh, Brain,” she whispered into his unhearing ear. “You weren’t much, but you cared for me. I know you did.” She kissed the cold, bloody mouth. “I won’t leave you alone,” she said.

Far off in her mind somewhere, she heard a sound. An engine sound. She glanced up. The Duke was coming, bearing down on her. She hugged Brain one more time. “I’ll be there in a minute,” she told him, and stood up, facing the oncoming headlights.

“Come on!” a voice called from behind her. She turned to look at the Snake, the catalyst. She could have turned and run with him; it was the thing to do. But somehow, it just didn’t seem important anymore. Maybe being alive wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

She smiled, and waved to him. He nodded once, understanding instantly. The Snake knew what this was all about. He reached into his coat and pulled out the pistol, tossing it to her.

Drawing his lips tight, he turned and ran.

Maggie turned slowly back to face the Duke’s car. She had belonged to him once, long ago, and he had given her away because she was less than nothing to him.

She raised the pistol, stiff-armed, and began firing, mechanically, automatically. The headlights approached her as if in a dream, getting larger, farther apart. They were all of the car she could see, all she ever saw.

She sensed her death, rather than felt it. She was looking out, then up, and huge, heavy things were grinding her body beneath them. She was looking into the black, black night. She was looking for Brain.

Plissken heard the skidding and turned. The Duke lost control after hitting Maggie and slid hard into the side of the bridge, nearly punching through it to fall to the river below. But it didn’t fall.

He stopped running and watched. There was a second of stillness, then the driver’s door burst open and the Duke climbed out, rifle in hand.

Turning again, Plissken started running toward the lights of the wall far ahead. Running, for once, to police protection.

A barrier formed the terminus of the bridge. Old, junked cars in piles, then a large concrete barrier right in front of the big wall, which stretched out as far as he could see in either direction. He kept digging, keeping the President in front of him at all times.

The winch jeep was already at the wall when Hauk settled down a distance behind in his copter. He jumped out, running to the wall, yelling as he ran.

“Get that line over the wall,” he cried through cupped hands. “Move your ass!”

One of the blackbellies hurried to the line and tossed It up onto the wall, to one of the waiting guards at its top. They got hold of the thing, then frantically began attaching a pulley set up to the wall itself.

Hauk got up to them, breathing heavily. He had to get Plissken back. It had become vital to him in ways that he couldn’t even begin to understand or analyze. “Come on,” he whispered urgently. “Come on.”

They got past the wall of cars, and jumped at the retaining wall, grabbing the top to scramble over. Plissken got to the top and looked back. The Duke was no more than fifty steps behind, getting through the cars.

The big wall was in touching distance of the one they stood on. A line was slithering down for them, a winch line, creaking on wheeled pullies.

Reaching out, they grabbed the line. Plissken turned his back to the big wall, waiting for the Duke as the President wrapped his hand around the thing.

“Hang on!” Plissken yelled and, with a jerk, the line started creaking back up the surface of the wall, taking the President with it.

Plissken looked down at his lifeclock. 0:01:33, 32, 31. He looked straight up. The line had made the top of the wall. Hands were helping Harker over the top. The line started back down again.

Suddenly a flash. It was the Duke, midway through the car forest. His rifle came up, firing. Bullets began exploding all around Plissken; he dove, rolling on the bridge, getting behind a dead car.

The aim went up, up for the guards. The President hit the ground, flattening himself on the wall top. One of the guards moved to shield him with his body and was picked off, his lifeless form falling the fifty feet to the bridge below. The other went spinning away, disappearing off the other side.

The Duke saw the dangling wire, went running for it. Plissken got back on his feet, waiting until the Duke got to his vantage point, then he jumped up on the hood of the Ford that was hiding him and dove onto the Duke from behind.

They went down hard, the rifle skittering away across the concrete. He was atop the Duke, the man stunned by the fall. Grabbing the back of the man’s head, he slammed his forehead into the hard ground, a muffled cry issuing from the Duke’s mouth.

There was no time.

Plissken climbed off the man and jumped back up on the retaining wall. He dove for the line on the big wall, catching it part of the way up.

He could hear the President calling from the top of the wall. “Pull it up,” he was yelling. “Hurry.”

With a jerk, he felt the line moving upward. He looked back down to the ground. The Duke was up on hands and knees, blood streaming from his forehead into his face and eyes. He was crawling toward the rifle.

Plissken looked up. There was a long way to go. He looked back down. The Duke had picked up the rifle and was wiping the blood out of his eyes so he could see. He was taking aim at a sitting duck.

His eyes traveled up again. The President, face set in a grimace, was leaning over the edge of the wall. He had one of the guard’s rifles in his hands. He fired, pulling the automatic’s trigger and not letting go.

The ground kicked up all around the Duke, and he exploded blood from twenty places on his immense frame. He danced with the bullets, as they kicked him, already dead, through a lifeless mazurka.

Finally he reeled on one foot, falling in a heap to the bloody pavement, and lay still.

The line got Plissken to the top. The President helped him over. “Thanks,” he rasped, then, still holding the rope, went over the other side, motioning for the winch operators to bring him down.

As he descended, he saw Hauk looking up at him, then he saw a jeep carrying the old doctor and that damnable machine screech to a halt next to him.

Cronenberg jumped out of the jeep and hurried around to the machine, bringing out those long rubber hoses that had planted the bombs in him to begin with.

Ten feet from the ground, Plissken let go of the rope and dropped the remaining distance. He came down hard on his bad leg, buckling to the ground with the pain. He looked at his watch. 0:0:14, 13, 12…

Struggling to his feet, he moved toward the machine, limping, falling, pulling himself along the ground with the power left in his arms. He got up, leaning on the jeep for support. Hauk rushed over to help him. He pushed him away.

Cronenberg had flipped on switches and was holding out the tubes. “Turn on the power.” he told one of the blackbellies.

He was fading in and out, threatening to faint. The sound of a generator. The machine whirred to blathering life. He made it to Cronenberg. The man was smiling at him, preparing to place the tubes on his neck. Then, a hand pushing them away.

Hauk’s voice. “The tape, Plissken.”

Plissken put his hands in his pockets, digging, grasping. They wouldn’t work right. He couldn’t feel anything.

“Jesus!” Cronenberg said. “Five seconds, four, three…”

He pulled his hand out and it was there, lying in his feeble grasp. Hauk grabbed it and moved aside. Cronenberg’s tubes on his neck, the man’s weathered face showing concern.

The machine buzzed loudly, then was silent. It clicked off. Plissken’s eyes drifted down to the watch. It read zeroes all the way across the dial.

Everything stopped. They all stared at one another-waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

“That’s it,” Cronenberg said at last.