Day One: A Novel (26 page)

*   *   *

They left Center Drive and took the access road until they reached the edge of the park. Stalled traffic at this point had grown thicker, twisted metal bodies clinging together like spent lovers, their doors hanging open to mark their occupants’ hasty escapes. A man had collapsed over his food stand. Someone had crushed his skull with a blunt instrument. Blood from a gruesome head wound leaked across buns scattered on the sidewalk below.
People are turning on each other.
Hawke wrenched his eyes away from the dead man. He couldn’t afford to get distracted. It was only a matter of time before the drone found them again.

The intersection looked hopelessly jammed. He looked around and found a break in the trees. “Hold on,” he said.

He took the truck up over the curb and bounced over a rise in the ground, winding through the grass and under the overhanging canopy of leaves, the truck’s shocks groaning and the undercarriage bottoming out with a scraping squeal. They lost what remained of the muffler against a rock, scraped by a low-hanging branch and bounced through more open space. Young and Vasco were thrown together and braced themselves against the slippery seat, Vasco cursing softly under his breath.

Hawke threaded his way through the maze until he reached the Merchants’ Gate entrance to the park. The colossal monument to the USS
Maine
stood like a broken finger pointing at the sky, its gilded metal top sheared off by some kind of explosion. The fountains were still sputtering, but the pool had been crushed under the weight of the statue as it toppled to the ground, bronze horses and seashell chariot mangled like mutated creatures struggling to emerge from the deep.

He maneuvered past one of the lower gatehouses and stopped the truck at the square in front of the fountain for a moment, staring at the spectacle before them. Columbus Circle was jammed with crushed vehicles. A massive tanker truck of some kind had barreled into the center of the circle at a high speed, obliterating several smaller cars before rolling and catching fire. The explosion had blackened most of the remaining cars, torched the grass and flowers into a carpet of ash and touched the fronts of the buildings that ringed the circle with sooty fingers. The shattered remains of tree trunks stood like broken teeth, and the fountain that had once stood at the center had been crushed. Smoke still rose lazily from the remains and drifted through the open air.

Hawke could see the seared remains of drivers draped like set pieces across the interiors of the closest cars, their bony fingers still gripping the wheels as if they had been permanently sealed in place.

Vasco removed his hands from the dash slowly, as if a sudden move might fan the flames. Hawke opened the door with a squeal and groan of metal, leaving the engine idling. Somewhere beyond the taller buildings, he thought he could hear raised voices, the sound of a large and angry crowd. The sound of the truck’s mangled muffler made it difficult to make out.

He craned his neck to look skyward but could see nothing through the haze that thickened the air. If the drone was there, it remained out of sight.

He scanned the mass of cars, looking for a way through. The globe that sat in front of Trump Tower had been dislodged by a bus and had rolled halfway toward the circle. He thought he could squeeze by on the right, past the subway entrance and onto Broadway.

Hawke worked the truck through the gap, scraping the passenger-side mirror off on the globe. Beyond it, the street was less jammed with traffic. He kept the truck moving fast, turning on 60th Street past Jazz at Lincoln Center, its famous sign knocked even farther askew, and one of the ubiquitous Starbucks. A clothing store’s huge windows had shattered, mannequins lying toppled and broken within glittering shards like jewels. Movement from somewhere within the store caught Hawke’s eye, but he turned away, not wanting to see anything more.

*   *   *

Hawke hit Columbus and swung left with bald tires screeching, avoiding another nasty pileup around the steps of the Church of St. Paul the Apostle. A small group of people had gathered on the steps, their heads bowed in prayer. A young boy not much older than Thomas stood by his mother’s side and stared solemnly at the truck as it went by.

Another explosion had ruptured the surface of Columbus a little over a block away. Smoke poured skyward; there was no way through. “Hang on,” Hawke said, making a hard right onto 59th Street. There were more signs of looting here, windows smashed, the contents of buildings strewn on the sidewalks like intestines trailing from a stomach wound. Someone had spray-painted
CHECKPOINT
in dripping red letters across the front of an apartment building with an arrow pointing west up 59th.

As they approached Roosevelt Hospital, Hawke slowed the truck to a crawl. An ambulance stood abandoned, parked sideways across the street, rear doors open. He flashed back to Lenox Hill and a deep chill settled over him, the feeling of isolation, dizziness, hallucinations of the dead clawing at his shoulders. He had sensed the shadowy figure of a woman in the morgue. Doe had been in his mind even then, although he couldn’t have known what she was, at least not entirely.
Intuition.
Weller had talked about Doe back in his office, rambling about a conspiracy, Eclipse coming after him because of
her.
The pieces had all been there; Hawke just hadn’t put them all together.

But the ambulance wasn’t the only thing that had slowed his approach. Beyond it were three cop cars, lights flashing and doors open, blocking the hospital’s emergency entrance. On the street in front of the cars were construction sawhorses and an A-frame sign on which someone had written CHECKPOINT FULL SEEK OTHER ROUTES in black marker.

Hawke stopped the truck just before the sign. They stared through the windshield at the intersection of West 59th and Tenth. “Holy Christ,” Vasco said.

A crowd of several hundred people had gathered just beyond the hospital, swelling up through the intersection and spilling out over sidewalks, facing off against a line of NYPD officers in full riot gear blocking their access. Hawke could hear the sound of the crowd like an angry ocean breaking against rock. He saw bottles and rocks come flying above the heads of those closest to the police as they surged forward. Fires flared through windows, and several cars were smoldering.

The three people in the truck cab didn’t move or speak for a long moment as they watched the drama unfold through the pitted windshield. Just a couple of blocks away were Fordham University and Lincoln Center, the heart of art and culture in the city, while in front of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice a group of men was rocking another car, trying to flip it over.

The sound rose, a gathering storm rumbling, about to break. The row of police advanced, guns out and shields up. More people threw things overhead, and as a flaming bottle exploded at a policeman’s feet and crawled up his front, turning him into a teetering inferno, the others began firing wildly into the crowd. Several people went down under the volley of bullets, others surging forward to replace them, brandishing makeshift weapons.

“We can’t get through on Columbus,” Young said, “not with that hole in the street—”

Hawke glanced in the rearview mirror. A squad car had turned in behind them, lights flashing. The driver’s door opened and a cop in riot gear stepped out, his face hidden behind the glare of his visor, gun swinging up as he assumed a shooter’s stance behind the car door.

“We’ve got company,” Hawke said.

“Out of the vehicle!” the cop shouted. “Hands where I can see them!”

Vasco looked behind them. “Oh shit,” he said. “Go! Now!”

Hawke floored the accelerator and the truck surged forward, knocking the A-frame down and bouncing over it. As they approached the front Roosevelt entrance several cops from the riot line swung around to face them, guns up. Hawke cut left between huge pillars toward a small, open courtyard in front dotted with trees, the only space he could fit through without running anyone down. The other side was blocked with cars. Hawke heard more gunfire; he ducked his shoulders, but the rear window remained intact as he jumped the curb and smashed through a metal fence, clipped a bench and narrowly avoided another group of people running in their direction.

They rattled down a short flight of concrete steps, and Hawke felt something give in the truck’s undercarriage as they crashed through the fence on the other side and careened the wrong way south down Tenth Avenue. He pushed the accelerator to the floor, ignoring a terrible grinding noise under his feet. The wheel was shaking badly in his hands, numbing his fingers.

“Slow down,” Young said. “The wheel’s going to come off.”

Hawke glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the crowd rapidly receding and no signs of anyone coming after them. But he didn’t ease up on the gas. The street was wide here, enough to avoid the abandoned cars, even at a higher speed. He was done slowing down; he would run this truck into the ground.

The skyscrapers downtown rose in front of them, black smoke billowing upward. As they passed West 57th, Hawke looked right and caught a glimpse of the Hudson, winking like a shining steel ribbon in the distance. It brought a memory of their summer trip to Point Pleasant Beach, Thomas tottering down the newly restored Jenkinson’s Boardwalk after their adventures in the water, his skin losing the bluish tint of cold as he took in the rides, games and food vendors, the smells wafting over him, gulls crying overhead. Thomas ate French fries and ice cream and was exhausted by one, and they had left early, he and Robin talking quietly as Thomas slept in the backseat.

What did we talk about?
The memory plagued Hawke, haunted him. He couldn’t remember. For the life of him, he couldn’t remember anything else.

The Hudson was gone again, hidden behind brick buildings. The open water was freedom, almost close enough to touch. He thought of Cuttyhunk Island, isolated, self-contained, a place to hide. He would get them out safely. He imagined finding Robin and Thomas waiting for him and tried to force his mind to hold on to it, but the thought dissolved once again into a vision of their apartment in shambles, blood on the walls, his family gone, fading away into the abyss.

The memory of finding Lowry crouched in the darkness of the basement came back to him. Lowry, staring at old family photos and thinking about … what? Hawke squeezed the steering wheel so hard that his hands started to ache. Whatever had happened to Robin was his fault. He hadn’t acted in time, and now his family was paying the price.

“Oh no,” Young said. She had turned around in the seat as far as she could and was peering out through the rear window. Hawke glanced at her and saw Vasco staring backward at the sky, too. Hawke couldn’t see, but from the look on their faces, he didn’t want to know.

“The drone’s back,” Vasco said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

4:56 P.M.

A FOUR-CAR ACCIDENT CLOGGED
most of the 51st Street intersection a hundred feet away. Hawke took the old truck up onto the sidewalk, barreling underneath a temporary construction passageway, the world suddenly plunged into darkness as his bumper pinged one of the supports and caused the roof of the passageway to come down behind them like a wave of dominoes. He swerved back onto the road and into the gray light, past a line of shops with colorful awnings, an Italian grocery, a burger joint and a dry cleaner’s, speeding past the New York Skyline Hotel. The truck was making a ticking sound now like on
Wheel of Fortune
when the wheel was spun,
tick-tick-tick-tick,
and it was getting louder and more violent as the shuddering increased until Hawke had to grip the steering wheel with all his strength or risk being shaken off.

He kept the gas pushed to the floor and an eye on the side mirror, watched the drone sweep in and out of view behind them like a darting insect.
Come on.
They passed 48th Street and Hell’s Kitchen Park, the basketball courts empty, black metal fence like a cage to keep children from escaping. The truck wasn’t going to make it. The tunnel was coming up, another five or six blocks now, but the ticking noise had grown into a whirling grind, the transmission maybe, driveshaft cracked.

Vehicles were starting to pile up, more and more of them, and he kept to the center of the street to avoid as many as possible. The city skyscrapers loomed in front as they flew past 43rd and then 42nd Street with its huge shining glass hotel tower. Hawke’s heart dropped as he saw smoke drifting ahead from several locations. He thought there had been some sort of explosion within the tunnel itself. Doe had disabled the escape routes just like she had taken out the bridges. Of course she would have thought of everything. He could already see it; the entrances all blocked, cars and trucks would be jammed in all of them, making it impossible to pass. She was cutting them off before slowly strangling them to death.

The truck began to jerk, and the engine raced ahead, teeth slipping in the gears underneath. As the truck’s engine screamed in protest, something slammed into them from the left, coming out of nowhere like some kind of beast lunging with open jaws. Hawke felt the impact like a sledgehammer in his shoulder and hip, and as his head slammed into the driver’s side window with a sickening crack, time slowed down to a crawl; the world went dark as they did a shrieking, horrible spin, the truck tipping up onto its side and sliding, then grinding to a stop against a light pole.

*   *   *

Hawke’s ears were ringing. He opened his eyes, his vision shot through with pinpricks of bright light. He slowly became aware of Vasco right in front of him, shoulders jammed down against the pavement and shattered windshield, bleeding from the mouth. Hawke reached out to touch him, and the effort took an abnormally long time, his arm stretching through space; eventually his fingers found Vasco’s throat, searching for a pulse, and the man jerked against him and opened his eyes, coughed a spray of blood. “Jason,” Hawke said, “talk to me.”