New York Run

Chapter One

The four members of Elite Squad-A7 could sense their impending doom in the dank air.

“Readings!” Captain Edwards barked, struggling to keep his voice under control.

The trooper with the pulse scanner strapped to his right wrist. Private Dougherty, was gaping down the dim passage to their right.

“Scan, damnit!” Captain Edwards ordered, slapping Dougherty on the left shoulder.

The youthful Dougherty, sweat beading his brow and coating his crewcut brown hair under his helmet, took a deep breath and glanced down at his scanner. “They’re still after us!” he wailed. “Coming from every direction!”

“How many?” Captain Edwards demanded.

Dougherty shook his head. “I can’t tell! There’s too much interference!”

“We can’t stay here!” Captain Edwards declared. “We’re too exposed.”

Elite Squad-A7 was silhouetted in the junction of two hallways, their shadows projected along the tiled walls by their helmet lamps.

“Stick together!” Captain Edwards commanded. “We can’t afford to be separated!”

Private Dougherty and the two others, Geisz and Winkel, nodded their understanding, their helmet lamps bobbing up and down.

Captain Edwards took the passage to his left. His palms felt sweaty on the Dakon II fragmentation rifle clutched in his hands.

“I’ve got a blip twenty yards behind us!” Private Dougherty yelled.

The four commandos spun, facing toward the junction they’d just vacated.

“On me!” Captain Edwards bellowed, leveling the Dakon II, his finger on the trigger.

Their combined lamp lights clearly illuminated the junction. A shadowy apparition appeared for an instant, and they caught a glimpse of a tall creature with grimy, gray flesh, gaping, reddish eyes, and a leering mouthful of yellow teeth. The monstrosity stopped and blinked in the bright light, starting to step backward, raising its left arm to shield its moldy face.

“Fire!” Captain Edwards shouted.

The passageway thundered as the four members of Elite Squad-A7 opened up, their fragmentation rifles chattering in unison.

The creature in the junction was struck in the chest and head, its body exploding in a violent spray of putrid flesh and a vile, greenish fluid. It shrieked as it died.

“Move!” Captain Edwards instructed his squad.

Geisz and Winkel took off, Geisz taking the point, her blue eyes alertly scanning the corridor ahead.

Private Dougherty followed them, studying the scanner.

Captain Edwards brought up the rear. “Readings!” he snapped.

“They’ve disappeared off the scope,” Dougherty replied.

“That’s impossible!” Captain Edwards responded.

“I’m telling you they’re gone!” Private Dougherty said, disputing his superior.

“Let me see that!” Captain Edwards said.

Private Dougherty halted and swung his right arm around. “Here! See for yourself.”

Captain Edwards leaned over the scanner, checking the grids for blips of white light.

Nothing.

“But that’s impossible,” Edwards repeated.

“Don’t I know it!” Dougherty agreed.

“Let’s go!” Captain Edwards kept his lamplight on the hallway behind them as he trailed Dougherty, his mind whirling. There was no way they could just vanish like that! So where the hell had they gone? Were there other passages or vents not marked on the blueprints the Technics possessed? Some way they could travel beyond scanner range in the space of a few seconds?

“Captain Edwards!” came a cry from further along the hall.

Edwards recognized the voice of Marion Geisz. “Hurry!” he prodded Dougherty, and the two of them hastened along the corridor.

Geisz and Winkel were waiting ahead, their helmet lamps pointed downward.

They’d found the stairwell. Again.

“It looks like there’s no bottom,” Geisz commented as Edwards and Dougherty reached her side.

“It gives me the creeps!” Winkel commented, his brown eyes wide from fright.

“Stow that crap, mister!” Captain Edwards stated. He stared down the stairwell, noting the dusty metal rails and the cobwebs covering the walls.

“We know our objective, people! Let’s get cracking! Geisz, the point!”

“What else?” Geisz quipped, and started down.

“I just hope the Minister was right about this place,” Winkel said as he followed Geisz:

“Can the squawking!” Captain Edwards ordered. “You know better!

You’re the best of the best!” he reminded them. “Technic commandos! Act like it!”

The three troopers took the reprimand in resentful silence. Geisz, in particular, was irritated by Edwards’ audacity. She’d seen far more combat than he had, and she knew what was expected of a professional storm trooper. Still, now was hardly the time to be distracted by petty animosities. She had to concentrate on the task at hand, or she might not live to see Chicago again. Moisture was trickling from under her helmet, plastering her crewcut blonde hair to her scalp, causing her skin to itch.

She suppressed an impulse to scratch the itching, and focused on the stairs ahead.

Dust and spiderwebs.

And more dust and spiderwebs.

But nothing else.

Geisz saw the streaks of dust caking the metal railings, and suddenly realized there wasn’t any dust on the stairs.

Someone… or something… must be using the stairs on a regular basis, but not bothering to use the railings.

Three guesses what they were.

Geisz reached up and cranked the volume control on her right ear amplifier. There was a crackling in her helmet, then a sustained hiss as the transistorized microphone strained for all its circuits were worth.

What was that?

Private Geisz slowed, listening intently. She thought she’d heard the muffled tread of a foot on the stairs below. She leaned over the railing and swept the lower levels with her lamp.

Nothing.

“Anything?” Captain Edwards asked from up above.

“I don’t know,” Geisz replied uncertainly.

“Stay alert!” Captain Edwards advised them.

Geisz almost laughed. As if they had to be told! She cautiously took another turn in the stairwell, walking to the right, her Dakon II at the ready.

Something scraped below her.

Geisz stopped, leaning against the wall to protect her back.

“What is it?” Captain Edwards demanded.

Geisz ignored him, striving to pinpoint the source of the noise.

“What is it?” Captain Edwards asked again. “Why the holdup?”

Geisz motioned for quiet. She could detect the faint sound of heavy breathing in her right ear.

“I’m getting something!” Dougherty suddenly yelled. “Lots of them!

Above and below us! And…” he paused.

“And?” Captain Edwards angrily goaded him.

“And on both sides!” Dougherty said.

“Both sides?” Captain Edwards surveyed the stairwell. “There’s nothing there but brick walls!”

“This damn thing must be broken,” Dougherty muttered, adjusting the calibration control on his pulse scanner.

It wasn’t.

The wall behind Private Dougherty abruptly collapsed, tumbling bricks and mortar onto the stairs and creating a swirling cloud of dust.

“What the…!” Captain Edwards began, and then he spotted the forms pouring from the gaping hole in the stairwell wall.

Dougherty saw them too, and he cut loose with his fragmentation rifle, the dumdum bullets ripping into the nightmarish creatures and blowing their grisly bodies apart. He downed two, three, four in swift succession, and then one of them reached him. Momentarily paralyzed with fear, he screamed as a cold, clammy, moist hand closed on his throat.

Captain Edwards saw the hulking figure towering over Dougherty, but he hesitated, unwilling to risk hitting the trooper. The cloud of dust reduced visibility to only a few feet, and he wanted to be sure before he pulled the trigger. He moved in closer, aiming his rifle, when strong hands clamped on his shoulders and lifted him bodily from the floor.

Private Geisz, enveloped in the dust, tried to catch a glimpse of her companions. She saw several struggling forms in the middle of the dust cloud, then felt her blood freeze as a terrifying screech reverberated in the confines of the gloomy stairwell.

There was a loud, crunching noise, like the sound of breaking bones.

“Captain Edwards!” Geisz shouted. “Doughboy! Wink! What’s happening?”

No one answered.

A tall scarecrow shape loomed above her, its stick-like limbs clawing in her direction.

Something growled.

Private Geisz cowered against the wall, her meticulous training overwhelmed by her instinctive loathing of the form on the step above. She could see one bony hand reaching for her neck, could see its wrinkled, gray flesh and its tapered, yellow nails, and could even see the brown dirt caked between its extended fingers. She wanted to bolt, to flee for her life, to get the hell out of there. But at the very second when those gruesome fingers touched her skin, instead of racing pell-mell down the stairs in reckless flight and abandoning her mates and friends, she reached deep within herself and discovered her innermost self, her true nature, her fundamental essence, the steel of her personality. Her bravery was tested to its limits, and she wasn’t found lacking.

“Eat this, sucker!” Geisz stated defiantly, and angled the Dakon II toward the creature’s midsection.

The creature hissed.

Geisz squeezed the trigger.

Her attacker was blown backward by the impact of the dumdum bullets, its body bursting apart across the chest and face.

Geisz didn’t bother to check it; she knew the damn thing was dead. She punched the Dakon II onto full automatic and bounded up the stairs, into the dispersing dust cloud, searching for her companions.

Figures were all around her in the gloom.

“Captain!” Geisz yelled. As the last of the cloud dissipated, her helmet lamp revealed the hideous features of those nearest her. With a start, she realized she was completely surrounded by… them! There was no sign of her fellow commandos!

One of the creatures lunged at her, its red orbs glaring.

Geisz crouched against the railing and fired, swinging the Dakon II in an arc from right to left, taking out everything in her field of vision. She saw more monstrosities coming from the hole in the wall and fired into them, the fragmentation rifle functioning flawlessly, ripping them apart, literally blasting their shriveled flesh from their bones.

They fell in droves.

One of them was advancing down the stairs toward her.

Geisz spun to shoot them, but the Dakon II unexpectedly went empty.

Oh, no!

Geisz frantically released the spent magazine and heard it clatter on the stairs as she extracted a fresh magazine from her belt pouch and hurriedly inserted it into the rifle. She slapped her left hand on the bottom of the new clip, slamming it home, and she shot the creature in the face even as it sprang at her.

Suddenly, she was alone.

Geisz realized the creatures were gone. She scanned the hole, then up and down the stairwell. Bodies littered the steps, but none of them belonged to her friends or the captain.

What the hell had happened to them?

Geisz pondered her next move. If she were smart, she’d head for the surface and the jeep and take off for Chicago. But what if Doughboy and Wink and Edwards were still alive? Didn’t she owe it to them to try and find them? She thoughtfully bit her lower lip. Yeah, she owed it to them.

But how was she supposed to find them? The tunnels under the city were a virtual maze. Doughboy had carried their scanner, and without the pulse scanner she couldn’t get a fix on their belt frequencies. She frowned, disgusted. Why the hell hadn’t they issued scanners to everyone? She knew the answer to that one. The higher-ups wanted their arms free so they could carry more of the stuff up to the jeep.

And what about the stuff? The objective of their mission?

Geisz stared down the stairwell. It was down there, according to the Minister. About two floors below her present position. Canister after canister of it. Was the stuff worth so many lives? she wondered.

She had a choice to make.

Geisz shook her head in frustration. Either she could search for Edwards, Doughboy, and Wink, when she knew there wasn’t a chance of locating them, or she could retrieve one of the damned canisters for the Minister.

Crap.

Private Geisz stood and moved down the stairwell, treading softly, her right ear tuned to the amplifier in her helmet. She descended two floors to the lowest level without incident.

So where were the creatures?

She leaned against the wall at the bottom of the stairwell and played her light over the passageway ahead. What was it Doughboy had called the things? Zombies! That was it.

So where were the Zombies?

Geisz detected a doorway about 30 feet away, in the right-hand wall.

On an impulse, she replaced the partially spent magazine with a new one from her pouch. There was no sense in being careless at this point of the game! She insured the Dakon was set on full automatic, then pressed the proper button to activate the Laser Sighting Mode. Sure, it would be a drain on the batteries, but she couldn’t afford to waste precious time sighting the rifle, especially now that she was alone. The red dots could be a lifesaver when every millisecond counted.

Here goes nothing!

Private Geisz sidled toward the doorway, keeping her back against the right wall. Her head was constantly in motion, sweeping her helmet light along the corridor. Static crackled in her right ear. She glanced at the tiled floor, then stopped, perplexed.

Dust covered the floor and the walls, a thick layer of dust undisturbed by a solitary footprint.

Something was wrong here.

Geisz examined the floor for as far as her light revealed, and it was all the same. Not a single print. But why? she asked herself. The Zombies were all over the place. They infested the ruins. Why didn’t they use this hallway? Why did they apparently avoid the lower level? There was no evidence of anyone, or anything, using this corridor in a long, long time.

Why?

Geisz grinned. What was the matter with her? Why was she looking a gift horse in the mouth? If the zombies weren’t down here, so much the better! It made her job that much easier! She walked to the doorway and paused before the closed wooden door.

What if they were waiting for her on the other side?

Geisz pressed the right side of her helmet against the door and listened, but the amplifier was silent.

Lady Luck was with her!

Geisz tried the knob, and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. She took a step back, then spun, ramming her right leg into the door, her black boot slamming into the wood an inch from the knob. The door trembled, but it held. She kicked at it again, and again, and on her third attempt the aged wood splintered and cracked and the door swung open.

There was a rustling sound from inside the inky interior.

Geisz flattened against the wall and tensed.

Now what?

Geisz felt goosebumps erupt all over her flesh, and she resisted an urge to run. She wasn’t about to quit when she was this close to their objective!

Besides, all she needed was one lousy canister and the Minister would hail her as a hero. It might even mean a promotion, and she could use the extra pay.

She took a deep breath.

Geisz crouched and whirled into the doorway, the Dakon II pointed into the chamber, her helmet lamp illuminating the room and its contents.

The canister chamber was perhaps 20 feet square, and crammed with stack after stack of faded yellow canisters. The canisters, six inches in diameter and ten inches in height, were stacked in tidy rows from the cement floor to the ceiling.

All except in the center.

Geisz took a step forward. The middle of the chamber was covered with piles of fallen canisters, as if dozens of stacks had collapsed. All things considered, it was a minor miracle all of the stacks hadn’t toppled over when the city was hit.

So what had made the rustling sound?

Geisz looked around the chamber, but nothing moved. She decided to grab a canister and scoot. Taking more than one was impossible. She would have her hands full fighting the Zombies en route to the surface.

One would be burden enough. She hastened to the nearest stack, reached up, and took hold of one of the canisters. As she did, her helmet lamp focused on the ceiling, on the center of the ceiling directly above the collapsed stacks in the middle of the room.

It was perched in a huge hole in the ceiling, its legs bent, prepared to pounce.

Geisz gasped at the sight of it, stunned.

One of its four green eyes blinked.

Geisz backpedaled, elevating the Dakon II, a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

The size of it!

She reached the doorway, and that’s when the thing dropped toward her, roaring, its ten legs scrambling over the canisters and upending stack after stack as it surged after her.

Geisz crouched and squeezed the trigger, the Dakon II cradled in her right arm. The fragmentation bullets tore into the deviate, rocking it, chunks and bits of black flesh and shredded skin flying in every direction.

The chamber shook as it reared up and bellowed in agony.

But it kept coming.

Geisz turned and ran, heading for the stairwell. She glanced over her left shoulder, knowing the thing couldn’t possibly squeeze its gigantic bulk through the narrow doorway, confident she could escape before it breached the door. So she was all the more amazed when it flowed through the doorway without breaking its stride, its body seeming to contract as it passed through and expanding again once it was in the corridor.

No!

Geisz raced for her life, her heart pounding in her chest. She reached the stairwell and gripped the railing, risking one quick look down the hallway.

It was only a foot away, its cavernous maw wide, its fangs glistening in the light from her lamp.

Geisz swung the Dakon II up, the red dot clearly visible on the mutant’s sloping forehead, and pulled the trigger.

The deviate roared and closed in.

Private Marion Geisz fired as the thing reached for her, fired as its claws clamped on her abdomen, and fired as it lifted her into the air and her stomach was crushed to a pulp. Her arms went limp, and blood poured from her mouth. She sagged and dropped the Dakon II, and the last sight she saw was the monster’s teeth snapping at her face.

She thought she heard someone screaming.