Monster Island(82)

So close. It was right there. Right there!

Jack put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He wasn’t threatening me, or even reminding me of my responsibilities. Just emotional support, from a guy who I would have thought incapable of such. I turned to nod at him and sank back into my crewseat.

It wasn’t long before Kreutzer had us hovering over the Queensboro bridge where it crossed Roosevelt Island. As close as we dared to get to Manhattan in our noisy conveyance. I got up from my seat and looked down through the nose windows. I could see the dead far below, crowding around the bridge pylons, their heads craning upwards and their hands reaching for us.

“I don’t know if either of you has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior,” Kreutzer said, turning sideways in his seat, “but now might be the time.”

We ignored him and headed aft to the cabin. Jack and I took turns sealing one another into hazmat suits, just like the ones Ayaan and I used when we first came to Times Square a few days-or a lifetime-back. These were Coast Guard issue, meant for use during toxic spill cleanups, so they were thicker and more unwieldy but I had tested mine out and knew I could still walk in it. When we were suited up Jack ran me through the basics of fast-roping. He fitted me with a nylon harness that looped over my thighs then attached a descender-an aluminum figure eight-to my crotch with carabiners. When he was done he opened a hatch in the belly of the Chinook with a burst of white light and hooked up a winch for our lines. One end of the line went through my descender in a complicated loop. Jack attached a safety line to the back of my harness and I was good to go. “See you downstairs,” I said, trying to sound tough. Jack didn’t respond so I held my breath and stepped out through the hatch.

They call it fast-roping because “falling like a rock” doesn’t have the same military jargon feel. I could slow myself down if I didn’t mind burning my gloves-the friction from the ropes got intense-but I spent most of the descent in free fall, just like Jack had taught me. Falling objects all descend at the same speed-Galileo proved it-but when you’re carrying a fifty pound pack it sure feels like you’re dropping even faster. I slowed as I neared the ground, grabbing hard at my line until my gloves literally began to smoke and then flexed my knees just as I touched the concrete roadbed, rolling away from the impact so I didn’t break my ankles.

In a second I was up and holding the rope while Jack followed me down. We unclipped the various lines and harnesses and waved at Kreutzer, but he was already slipping sideways in a wide turn that would take him well out of sight of Manhattan. In a few seconds he was hidden behind a row of buildings and the world was suddenly silent, only my breath and the creaking of my suit to keep me company. Jack had expressly forbidden speaking during this part of the mission, just in case. All it would take was one dead man to notice us and we would fail, and our lives would be forfeit.

The bridge rose away from us on either side, a tendril of concrete flanked by high iron towers. To the east lay Manhattan, the Upper East Side and then Central Park. We had a long walk ahead of us. We got started without a word.

David Wellington - Monster Island





Monster Island





Chapter Twelve


Our walk through the Upper East Side made my bones ache and sweat pool in the small of my back but we weren’t spotted, which was the main thing. The streets were deserted-presumably Gary had pulled all of the dead away from this area to join the ranks of his army. That didn’t mean we took a lot of chances. We moved through the streets of Manhattan using a cover strategy that Jack called “bounding overwatch,” which meant I would hide in a shadowy doorway, my eyes scanning a street corner while Jack crossed the open space as fast as he could. Then he would take up position behind some kind of cover and I would do what he had just done, though far more clumsily.

We saw a number of buildings that had been pulled down by brute force-presumably for the bricks that built Gary’s tower. Hands and feet stuck out of the resulting rubble piles. Clearly Gary hadn’t worried much about job site safety when he sent his troops out for building materials. We only saw one active dead man, which was just enough to give me heart palpitations. If Gary had been using his eyes at that moment we would have been screwed-and there was no way we would know, not until we got to the Park and found Gary waiting for us. Thinking about it made me want to panic, so I tried not thinking about it. Which didn’t work.

The dead guy was standing in the middle of Madison Avenue, a stretch mostly bare of cars. He had his back to us, staring at a storefront covered up by a hoarding that had been turned into one giant billboard. COMING 2005: LA PERLA, the ad assured us. Beneath was a blow up of a woman wearing nothing but bra and panties, her back arched, her face turned to the camera with a look of disinterest. Even enlarged ten times her normal size her skin looked flawless, poreless.