HL 04-The Final Hour (25 page)

“Keep close,” Mike shouted back to me.

I did. He ran along a line of trees, his path tracing the shapes of their shadows. The shifting patches of dark thrown by the tree trunks and the bare branches gave us some cover and Mike made the most of it. All around us, the chopper spotlights swept back and forth over the grass, searching and searching.

But they’d lost us. By the time we reached the edge of the park, the throb of the rotors was growing dimmer as the choppers headed off over the trees in the wrong direction.

Following Mike, I stepped off the soft grass onto hard pavement. And I stopped. Mike was there, standing at the edge of the sidewalk. I followed his gaze, looked up and saw tall buildings standing black against the night. Their windows were broken and lightless. They seemed abandoned.

Mike slapped my shoulder and gestured with his head. He started running again. I went after him.

We wove down these dark, abandoned streets. There were no people anywhere. It seemed the city—or the borough—wherever we were—was completely empty.

Then we turned a corner—and suddenly there the people were. On a broad brightly lit boulevard, a large crowd moved in a steady line past stores and under streetlamps. There were police everywhere, too, standing on the outskirts of the crowd, scanning the people closely as they passed.

Mike and I stood on the corner of a shadowy side street. He swiped at his face with his hands, trying to use his own sweat to wash the grime off his cheeks, trying to make himself look as normal as possible. I did the same.

When he was done, Mike gave a quick tug at my elbow and started moving again. I followed him.

We joined the masses, moving with the human tide. In the distance I could hear sirens, lots of sirens. Then there came the beat of the choppers too. I looked up and saw a police helicopter hovering in the air right above us. When I glanced over at the patrolmen on the ground, they were all murmuring into their walkie-talkies. I figured they were getting the word about the crash in the park and our escape. I figured they were being told to look out for us. I felt the policemen’s eyes on me as we passed by them—I felt sure they were all looking straight at me. But I guess Mike knew that in a crowd like that, it would be hard to pick out any one person. Anyway, he shoved his way into the center of the throng and I went with him and no one spotted us.

We walked steadily along, pushed and carried by the flow of people. After a few minutes, I saw where we were heading. There was a subway stop on the corner up ahead. It was a stairway leading down from the sidewalk, the opening in the pavement surrounded by a low green barrier. At least one branch of the river of people was flowing into the opening and cascading down the stairs. Another few seconds, and Mike and I were cascading down with them.

As the lights of the streets, and the cold of the evening air, gave way to the muted light and the dank stuffy atmosphere of the enclosed subway station, I felt myself relax a little. I felt safer here, belowground, out of the open, away from the choppers.

As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked around the station, peering over the heads of the people around me. There was a ticket booth in the tiled enclosure and ticket machines against the wall and a row of turnstiles leading to the subway platform. There were more cops also, patrolmen in blue uniforms: one in the ticket area, two more that I could see on the platform, watching the crowds.

Mike muscled his way to the ticket machines and came back to me with a ticket. Then he motioned me toward the turnstiles. The crowd grew denser as the turnstiles slowed the people’s progress. We pushed in close to the thickening mass. Reached the turnstiles, swiped our tickets, pushed through. We walked directly past one of the patrolmen guarding the platform. My shoulder nearly brushed him as I went by, we were that close. I felt my breath catch as his eyes went over me, but then we were past him—and the next moment, the train shot into the station, the windows flashing as it roared and rattled past.

The train slowed, stopped. The doors opened. No one left the car. The crowd just poured in like water into a funnel. I had to shoulder my way through the dense mass to make it on. Then the doors closed and Mike and I were crushed together, packed in so tightly with the others I could hardly breathe.

The train started moving again.

Someone shouted drunkenly, “Happy New Year!”

We headed into Manhattan.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Into the Darkness

It was a long ride. The train rushed through the tunnel, blackness at the windows. The crowd held me tight, immobile—which was just as well. Left to stand alone, I might have collapsed. I was that exhausted.

The madness of the past hours flashed through my mind. The flight over the river. The sudden death of Patel. The wild helicopter chase close to the city streets. The sight of the chopper caught in the phone wires. The gunman falling through the air to his death. The chopper exploding. And the Cessna, landing without power in the park. The crash. The fire. Getting Rose and Mike out. The race through the streets . . .

And New Year’s Eve was just beginning.

It was not so long ago, I thought to myself, I was an ordinary guy, an ordinary kid in an ordinary town, doing the sorts of things you do every day. You know: getting through school, hanging with your friends, thinking about girls and sports and computers and did I mention girls? There were days in that old life when I wondered if anything really exciting would ever happen to me. There were days now—lots of days—when I wondered if the excitement would ever stop, if I would ever have a quiet dinner with Beth or play a round of
Medal of Honor
with my gang, or just, I don’t know, listen to music, shoot some hoops, whatever, you know, the things you do.

I missed life. I missed ordinary life. I wondered if I would ever see ordinary life again. I didn’t realize how good a thing it was until I lost it.

I stood crushed in the crowd. I stared into empty space. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself a little. Sorry and so tired I didn’t know how I was going to make it through.

The train crossed into Manhattan and headed south. I stared into space. Something funny came into my mind then. English class. I know: What a weird thing to think about. But suddenly I saw myself sitting there at my desk, listening to upbeat, roly-poly Mrs. Smith reading a Rudyard Kipling poem at the front of the class.

“If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew / To
serve your turn long after they are gone, / And so hold on
when there is nothing in you / Except the Will which says
to them: ‘Hold on’ . . .”

It was strange, I thought. At the time she read the poem, I don’t think I was even listening that closely. But now the words came back as if they had been written specifically for me:

Hold on when there is nothing in you except the Will
which says to them .
. .

“Hold on,” said Mike, his voice rising above the roar and rattle of the car. “It’s the next stop.”

I saw the train begin to slow. Lights flashed in the darkness of the window. Then the scene out there opened into a large station: Columbus Circle. The train stopped. The door opened. It was like releasing water through a dam. The people poured out with enormous force. Even if I’d wanted to stay on the train, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was carried out onto the platform in the tide.

I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The crowds had been dense out in the borough, but they were nothing compared to this.

The station was big—a broad interior space with several platforms, several tracks, visible through columns. People seemed to be coming from every direction, pouring up stairways and out of corridors, converging in front of the exits. More people than I’d ever seen in my life.

At first I was carried helplessly along in the massive human tide, up the stairs, toward the turnstiles. But before we could exit the station, Mike caught hold of my arm and pulled me to the side, against the massive swirling mosaic on the wall. We pressed against the multicolored tiles as the people flowed past us. Another opposing tide of people was flowing back into the station, back down toward the platforms, at the same time.

Mike rose up on tiptoe, stretched his neck, and looked around.

Then I heard him murmur, “This way.”

We joined the flow of people moving away from the exits, down a different flight of stairs, back toward the platforms. I hardly knew where we were going. I just followed Mike and went with the crowd.

We came out onto another platform now. A train had just arrived here. Its doors stood open and people were pouring out, then pouring in. The people who had just left the train were moving in a sludgy mass toward the exit. Others who couldn’t fit on the train were lining up along the edge of the platform to wait for the next one.

Mike kept moving, pushing against the thick cluster of bodies until we broke through and forced our way down the platform. I kept right behind Mike, but it wasn’t easy. I had to shoulder my way through the small spaces in the crowd.

After a couple of minutes, the mob seemed to thin suddenly—the grip of the crowd relaxed around me. Now I saw where Mike was going.

The platform ended just up ahead. There was a metal railing and then, beyond it, the darkness of the train tunnels and the tracks. A single police officer stood guard there, his hands behind his back, his legs akimbo, his back erect, his eyes moving and alert.

As the crowd fell away behind us, Mike continued down the platform toward the patrolman. Mike’s mustache curled as he broke into a rare, bright, toothy smile.

“Hey, Mike, where you going?” I murmured. I couldn’t believe he was walking right toward the cop.

But Mike either didn’t hear me or ignored me. He didn’t answer. He didn’t even look my way.

Now Mike was just about to reach the police officer. Nervous, I turned and looked behind me. I scanned the packed platform to see if anyone was watching us. We had gone beyond the end of the train, beyond the clusters of people. Everyone was intent on where he was going. No one was paying any attention to us at all.

Then I faced forward—and stopped short. My mouth dropped open.

The policeman was gone. He had just vanished. I had turned away for only a second and when I turned back, he seemed to have simply gone up in smoke.

Only not. Because then I looked down and saw him. Good thing it was noisy in the station, because I actually gasped out loud.

The cop lay crumpled and unconscious on the concrete platform. Mike stood over him, beckoning to me urgently.

The next instant, in one smooth, silent movement, Mike vaulted over the low railing and dropped down onto the train tracks below. As I stood there in shock, he raced away into the darkness of the train tunnel.

There was no time to hesitate. No time to think. Besides, what choice did I have? I took two long steps and reached the fallen patrolman. He was already stirring, already moving his hand to his head as he regained consciousness.

I stepped past the patrolman quickly, grabbed the railing, and vaulted over.

Then I was running after Mike, along the train tracks, into the tunnel, into the dark beneath the city.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Beneath the City

We ran into the tunnel, a close corridor with the train tracks laid tightly between the walls. We ran down the center of the tracks. There was nowhere else to go.

“Watch out for the rail,” Mike said to me over his shoulder.

“The what?”

“The rail.” He stopped so short I almost ran into him. He took me roughly by the shoulder and pointed. “The third rail.”

I saw it. A rail with a protective covering running over the top of it.

“There’s enough electricity going through that thing to blow your head off,” Mike said. “Literally. Step on it and you’re fried.”

I nodded, breathing hard. “Good thing to know.”

“Come on.”

And we were off again. Running through the tunnel down the center of the tracks.

As we went, I glanced back over my shoulder. I saw the platform behind us. That is, I saw a tall rectangle of light where the tunnel ended and the platform began. Some of the crowd was visible. The patrolman was visible too. He was just sitting up, just reaching uncertainly for the railing to pull himself to his feet. I wondered what Mike had done to him, but I didn’t ask. I knew he had a hundred techniques for knocking a guy out without hurting him.