The Phoenix Variant: The Fifth Column 3 (10 page)

Sophia turned and hit gridlocked traffic.

‘Oh,’ Aviary said. ‘The hurricane evacuation.’

‘And the explosion,’ Sophia said.

‘Yeah,’ Aviary said. ‘Maybe I should’ve taken you around here.’

‘Yes, maybe you should’ve,’ Sophia said.

‘Now what do we do?’ Aviary said. ‘Actually, I’m afraid to ask.’

‘I can still get us around,’ Sophia said.

She hurled the cab onto the wide footpath beside them and accelerated, horn blaring. A man and his five bags of shopping leaped into a printing shop to avoid her. She crossed a small intersection and Broadway was still locked with traffic. Fuck it, she thought. She hit her horn again and continued on the footpath, negotiating pedestrians and smashing through tables and chairs. Maybe she’d just stick to the footpath the whole way.

She drove past a few banks and dodged a FedEx van before hitting a dead end. The footpath disappeared just beyond a RadioShack: temporary walls were erected to block off a new construction site. So much for that idea, she thought.

She pulled the cab off the footpath and completely destroyed the front of a parked Mercedes. Aviary cheered from the back seat.

Sophia was back on the road, driving over a turning lane.

‘Straight ahead?’ Sophia yelled. ‘How far?’

‘Straight ahead!’ Aviary said. ‘One block!’

Sophia dodged a small traffic island—grazed between the curb and a stationary car—and nudged through a minor intersection. Tall, ponderous buildings loomed before her. She had no idea what was around the corner or a block ahead.

‘You’re my eyes now,’ she said to Aviary.

‘Copy that, Ms Super Operative person,’ the redhead said.

‘Don’t ever call me that.’

Pedestrians scattered from the crossing as she tore across it, overtook a brown UPS truck and flattened a neat row of orange traffic cones outside the Late Show with David Letterman. She ground to a halt as pedestrians walked one cab in front of her. There was room to go around on the right but she was blocked off by yet another goddamn UPS truck.

‘Fucking UPS trucks!’ Sophia yelled.

Aviary remained silent in the back seat.

On the right, a black Cadillac half-merged into the left lane, cutting her off on the left. She was boxed in from pretty much every angle.

‘How far off?’ Sophia said.

‘Two blocks now, but they’re gaining,’ Aviary said.

Sophia ground her teeth. She had to make her own way out. She moved her cab in behind the Cadillac, crunching into its right taillight.

‘So is this just a case of you’re doing enough damage,’ Aviary said, ‘so you might as well just maintain that level of destruction all the way through?’

Sophia didn’t reply. She kept going. The Cadillac driver started shouting hysterically. She paid him no attention, kept pushing through. He was stuck between her and the pedestrians walking in front of her. He had no choice but to nudge forward, triggering a heated standoff with pedestrians trying to walk in front of him.’

And then she had just the gap she needed.

She roared through, smashing parked bicycles on either side. They rattled and scraped, and were briefly carried along for the ride before being slung onto the concrete like broken toys. People looked on in shock.

Sophia was on the other side of the road, in a bike lane. It was clear here so she shoved her cab through the pedestrians and accelerated into another intersection. It was chaos around her. Ahead of her the left was clear but the right was almost at a standstill. She didn’t know if she was driving on the wrong side of the road or whether it was a service lane or bike lane, and she didn’t care as long as it got her there. She hit the gas again. She noticed a green sign above that read
W 52 St
.

‘How far?’ she asked.

‘Two blocks,’ Aviary said.

This is taking too long, she thought.

She slowed as she reached another intersection, just enough to see if anyone was going to collide with her. A Starbucks flashed by on her left. Posters and billboards for musicals were everywhere, lights blinking and neon signs pulsing. They smeared across her vision as she watched for obstacles.

A bright orange SUV lurched to a stop ahead of her, preparing to turn left. She weaved around it and took the center of the road over the white lines, through another pedestrian crossing. A bus roared past her and ground to a stop behind a queue of cars. She maneuvered around it, caught herself in another lane of traffic. She slammed her fists on the steering wheel.

In the rear-vision mirror she saw Aviary point to their right.

‘Sidewalk,’ she said.

Sophia opened her fists and nodded. ‘Sidewalk.’

She wrenched the steering wheel to the right and took off, over the curb, horn blaring. There were more people on this sidewalk and she had to keep the horn on so everyone could scatter. She took the cab past a pharmacy and farther into the built-up portion of Broadway.

‘One block,’ Aviary said. ‘They’re not moving as fast now.’

The SUV was stuck in traffic too. That was good but she’d have as much trouble trying to reach them. She needed to get there before they made it through.

She kept the cab on the sidewalk, crashing through garbage bags and newspaper stands. She had to move slower between the corner building and a metal newspaper booth, forcing pedestrians to run back the way they’d come. People screamed like lunatics, which seemed to amuse Aviary.

Sophia continued through another intersection, saw the bike lane was clear again and found a gap in the traffic. She smashed through. Tail- and headlights shattered in her wake. She kept moving, roared over a traffic island, destroying a small tree in the process, and hit the bike lane. She turned into it, crashing through a trashcan and two more newspaper stands.

‘Where are they now?’ Sophia yelled.

‘Less than a block. They haven’t moved much,’ Aviary said.

Sophia felt her hands tighten over the steering wheel. ‘Good.’

Flooring the accelerator, she punched through the next intersection, W 48th, and made good use of the bike lane.

Aviary was swearing. She hit her phone a couple of times.

‘What’s wrong?’ Sophia said.

‘GPS is stuck,’ Aviary said. ‘Wait. OK, they’ve moved. They’re one street over, on the left.’

Sophia hit the next intersection. It was blocked off ahead, foot traffic only. NYPD officers stood before metal barriers. She looked past them and realized traffic was one-way. And it was traveling to the right, not left.

‘That’s going to be hard,’ Sophia said.

‘Sorry, I thought it was here but—’

Sophia didn’t bother waiting. She crashed through the barrier, sending the officers scattering. The windscreen shattered into a thousand pieces but was held in place by its interlayer. Didn’t help Sophia though: she couldn’t see where she was going. Pedestrians huddled on the street corner. She maneuvered to avoid crashing into them, almost hitting a passing truck. She took the cab over the pedestrian crossing. Into oncoming traffic. ‘Hold on.’

‘Shit shit shit shit,’ Aviary said.

Sophia reached for her Glock and punched the barrel through the windscreen, clearing a hole just big enough to see out of. That helped.

There were two lanes ahead of her but the oncoming cars were crammed three abreast. Sophia jerked the cab to the right. She went wide, around a champagne-colored 4WD. It brought her into the right lane and an almost head-on with a Lexus. She nosed back into the center again, sideswiping a black sedan. She swerved, avoided another incoming car. Right lane again. The correct road was coming up on her right. She took it over the curb and hit the brakes.

She hit gridlocked traffic again.

‘I think you made those cops angry,’ Aviary said.

Through the rear vision she could see two NYPD officers moving around the chaos of crashed cars and burned rubber behind her.

They had nowhere to go.

Damien struggled against the weighted net. A current of electricity rippled through him. Air burst from his lungs and he collapsed. The current stopped, but as soon as Jay started wriggling nearby it sparked up again. Damien’ shook violently and he could do nothing to stop it.

He could see one of the black-helmed soldiers moving toward him. Jay was not suffering as badly. The soldier brought the end of his spear down on Jay’s leg, but Jay moved from its path and gripped the spear, pulling the soldier in. Jay planted one hand over the soldier’s Batman-like helmet and gripped. The soldier convulsed from Jay’s electrical charge and collapsed.

The current stopped again and Damien was able to regain control. Jay wrenched himself from the net. The woman shouted orders to her soldiers and they closed in. Another current rolled through Damien and his vision blurred. There was movement before him, then suddenly Jay was pulling him to his feet. He was out of the net just in time to see the soldiers leap down from the balconies. Jay swung his captured spear, catching a soldier as he landed and knocking him into the archway.

‘An electric net probably wasn’t your best choice,’ Jay said.

The woman ignored him. ‘Don’t you kill them now,’ she said. ‘They no use to us dead.’

‘No promises,’ Jay said.

‘I don’t think she was talk—’ Damien stopped mid-sentence as he noticed a soldier on the balcony aim her bow.

He pulled Jay sideways. An arrow punctured the floor-to-ceiling window behind them. They couldn’t possibly engage so many of them—Damien counted eight, not including the leader—and a further four who emerged from the foyer, blocking their escape to the west elevators.

The only other options were to move south past the three soldiers who had circled behind them. Or north, past the remaining black-helmed soldier and the leader herself. Damien had no idea where the glass-latticed doors would lead but it didn’t look promising.

Jay was already advancing toward the leader. Damien kept a few paces off. In combat, armed or unarmed, he never stopped moving. As soon as the soldiers saw Jay aiming for the leader, they pushed aggressively. The archer on the balcony removed an arrow from her quiver. Damien waited for her to aim and then rolled sideways, moving himself closer to a soldier.

The soldier thrust his spatha at Damien’s midsection. Damien turned, the blade missing him. For a longsword it was quite short, about thirty inches. Damien’s hip pressed on the soldier’s sword hand and his free hand pinned it there. Manipulating the wrist, he curled the hand back on itself. The wrist snapped and the tip of the sword turned, pressed into the soldier’s stomach, pushing at his armor.

Other soldiers were moving in fast on his left and Jay wasn’t around to disperse them. Damien tore the sword from his captive’s grasp and, with one hand, brought it back around, smashing the blade across the soldier’s golden helm. The impact concussed the guy and knocked him backward.

Damien over-swung on purpose; he’d seen another golden helmet advancing on his left. Damien’s shiny new spatha made it across in time to stop the slow overhead strike. Unlike the original soldiers who once wielded these heavy weapons, the modern day soldier attacking Damien wasn’t used to the weight and feel. The soldier swung again, in from the side.

From the corner of his eye, Damien saw the archer on the balcony take another shot. Damien turned his sword in, deflecting the soldier’s. He moved forward past him. The arrow shot from the bow and scythed behind them. As he moved to avoid it, he turned his wrist and ran the sword through the soldier’s neck.

Behind him, Jay thrust the end of his spear into the leader. She saw it coming and sidestepped it. He swung the spear in toward her. She ducked and it struck the black-helmed soldier instead. Damien could hear the air expel from the soldier’s lungs. The leader rolled under the spear toward Jay, her puglio slicing the air.

Damien saw Jay pull his spear in close. He used it as a staff, deflecting two quick stabs of the puglio. He brought it to her pearlescent helm but she ducked. He aimed low and caught her legs, knocking her to the ground. Another stab and he would’ve ended her there. But the black-helmed soldier towered over him. His spear thrust forward. Jay deflected it. The leader rolled clear.

Damien caught sight of Jensen retreating behind the archway and the safety of the soldiers. Damien couldn’t do anything about it—he had three soldiers moving toward him, each wielding a spatha. More were pushing in from the side, away from the archways. Jay had chosen their direction and they had to stick to it now.

Damien clashed his blade with the soldiers’. Behind him, the black-helmed soldier traded blows with Jay. Damien retreated beside Jay’s assailant, which at least blocked those coming at him from the archway.

The three soldiers in front of Damien moved forward together. Beside him, Damien could see the black-helmed soldier stabbing and slashing at Jay. The soldier noticed Damien and swung his spear toward him, hoping the weapon’s length would reach.

Damien deflected the spear and, between trading blows with the three soldiers in front of him, used his sword to slam it downward, pinning it to the ground long enough for Jay to skewer the black-helmed soldier.

Damien swung his sword into the black-helmed soldier’s breastplate—the blow throwing him backward and freeing Jay’s spear from its penetration. Jay was again able to swing across the advancing soldiers from the archway.

Damien kept a foot under the dead soldier’s spear as he retreated. I could use that myself, he thought. He knocked off two more strikes as the three attackers compressed, growing confident. Damien waited for the archer on the balcony to draw an arrow. He leaned back as she released it. It passed an inch from his chest. He reached near the end of the spear and—in line with Jay—kicked it into the air. It bounced from his foot. He grasped it with one hand and threw it, aiming for the center of the three soldiers. It struck the middle soldier above the collarbone and he collapsed.

Jay was beside Damien, checking over his shoulder. They had almost reached the lattice glass doors. Jay turned the handle and used the hilt of his spear to spread the doors open. Damien risked a glance. It was an open terrace, and beyond it downtown New York, skyscrapers glittering in the night. Damien could see dark, menacing clouds rolling in toward the city. A strong wind chilled his tuxedo and made him squint to see properly.

They sprinted for the edge, but Damien wasn’t impressed to find at least a one-level drop between them and a rectangular terrace below covered in tennis court grass. It connected with the tower on the other side, and from there they could escape through the east tower’s elevators or stairs.

The soldiers moved onto the terrace in pursuit.

‘This is all your fault,’ Jay said. ‘If you’d just let me shoot Jensen it wouldn’t have happened.’

Damien sighed and discarded his spatha. ‘For once I don’t disagree.’

The leader emerged onto the terrace, puglio in hand. Under her pearl helm, he could see sweat beading across her face.

‘There is nowhere for you to—’

Damien jumped.