I'm gonna pull a scoop on the nice sibling over at
The Twitter Novel Project and post the
entire Gotham's Graveyard story here, first. Since he's one of the few readers of this now private blog, I know he won't care a whit,
lmao. Especially since he already has half up and Tweeted the other half last night, lol
Ok, here goes.........
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gotham GraveyardBrian R.
KupferHe rests his arm against the door sill, the convertible top down, wind ruffling his open-necked silk shirt as he drives the antique
Fairlane down the nearly deserted streets.
On either side of him, the skyscrapers form metal and glass walls, the sun only shining down between buildings as it dips to set over New Jersey to his right.
Before the war, he would have never thought he would be able to drive through downtown Manhattan, especially not at anything slower than a crawl, but he wheels the Ford freely down one of the two designated motor vehicle lanes, rarely ever encountering another car, and never any of the thousands of yellow cabs the metropolis used to be famous for.
No, the opening stages of the war had certainly changed things here. Sure, the lights were still on in Times Square, but the souvenir shops had all long closed, and Broadway had been dead for years.
Within weeks of the start of the war, New York City had become the world’s most technologically advanced ghost town.
The chemical attacks had seen to that.
Thinking back on those times, Former
TSgt Dante
Michaels shudders.
If it
hadn’t been for the chemical attacks on Manhattan, and their effect on his way of life, he would have never ended up being thrown across the world and into war with Delta 3-3.
Michaels, known in Delta as
Ronin, took his hand momentarily off the steering wheel and rubbed it slowly over his shiny bald head, the rich milk chocolate color of his skin a marked contrast to the peach shirt and white pants he is wearing.
Of course, if he was trying not to stand out, he
wouldn’t be driving a black and white two-toned land yacht with matching black and white leather interior.
No,
Ronin wants anyone visiting the city to have no doubts that he is back in town. It is his way to honor his ghosts as he drives through his old neighborhood.
Part of him wanted to see if they would be angry enough to try something on the man who had left them behind.
He
wasn’t the same man who had left the city seven years ago, not by a long shot.
After all, he had been through hell, and kept right on driving.
Then came the war against the Chinks.
It had been one of the best things ever to happen to him.
It had changed and shaped him, like a forge and smith can make burning metal into a keen and cutting weapon.
He had always had the white hot fury and phenomenal strength.
What the hell of Delta life across Europe and Asia had done was focus and sharpen both, as well as giving him cunning and control.
He had entered the war a cudgel.
He came back a scalpel.
Ronin has hundreds of scars from the war. Some are even physical.
His eyes turn hard, and, while scanning the street for obstructions, also seem to get a faraway look as his thoughts drift back to the last time he had been in the Big Apple, the very day he had first laid eyes on this car, in fact.
It is as if he has noticed the car for the first time, all over again.
The car that had literally changed his life.
The Wu-Tang Clan’s “Babies” plays over the Jersey oldies station tuned in on the convertible’s radio, his body on autopilot, as the big man’s mind drifts back over the years.
As if it had happened yesterday, Dante
Michaels remembers that fateful day when his old life had ended.
+ + + + + +
The morning of June 6 had dawned foggy over the greatest city on earth.
The low mists had made the concrete jungle of Manhattan seem somehow more primeval, more dangerous.
It was also spooky as hell, thought Dante, out for his usual 6am morning run.
The hair on the back of his neck had stood up at the surreal sight, like something out of a B horror movie, of the sunrise-
backlit fog hovering over East 14
th Street bordering Stuyvesant Town, along which he is running.
It spooked him, and he had grown up on these streets!
However, for some reason, June 6
th felt a little different to the big man as he went about his morning workout.
The ear buds attached to the
iPod strapped to his arm filled his head with Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ 2009 hit “Empire State of Mind”, one of his favorite workout songs.
His feet hit the pavement in time to the bass beat, and his breathing was synchronized to the singers’ words, and, as he is often known to be, he was singing along on his jog.
Like almost everything else in life, running is made easier if you can synchronize yourself to a constant rhythm, and setting his workout to music also helps the impression that the time is going by faster.
As he jogged across 1st Avenue, his feeling of unease increased.
It came about the same time he heard a thump in the air behind him, sounding to be about the same height of the iconic buildings of Stuyvesant town, if not a little higher, though it sounded farther downtown than the edge of the Town property.
In instant later, he then heard a sound that every resident of Manhattan has learned to dread since 2001.
The growling whine could only be an aircraft at full throttle, very low over his beloved city.
Upon hearing the twin Pratt and Whitney PW4000 engines roar low overhead,
Michaels turned his job into a sprint, his feet chewing up the last block towards his apartment off the corner of 14
th and 2
nd.
There was a “
whump” sound from in front of him, sounding about ten blocks away, followed by a couple more farther uptown, which he subconsciously heard while he sprinted for home.
While he nears their brownstone, he can see his
fiancé, Victoria, standing on their red-painted fire-escape, looking northeast towards where the sound of the bomber has diminished, sounding like it has flown over Harlem.
Looking back over his shoulder, Dante can see that the mist has started to clear, the ten mile an hour wind coming unusually out of the southeast today and blowing the smell of the Hudson across his neighborhood.
The breeze is refreshing, but the lightening mist helps Dante to notice that the air has taken on a yellowish-brown haze.
He thanks whatever providence and the overcast that had made him decide not to wear his sunglasses today.
With the polarized lenses on, he would never have noticed the slight tinting to the sky, it was so subtle.
Somehow, Dante also knows it is not a natural sight for his city, nor is it some weird atmospheric anomaly changing the light.
A feeling of animal panic floods up his spine, though he can’t put his finger on a reason for it. It is a totally ingrained instinctive reaction to danger.
He
didn’t think it was possible, but Dante actually managed to speed up once he saw Victoria.
He knew he had to get home.
Dante
Michaels sprints across 2
nd Ave and angles to the black iron gate in front of his building. Hardly slowing down, he unlocks it and bulls through the main door of their building, taking the steps three at a time to their second story apartment.
Rushing into the apartment,
Michaels yells out to Victoria.
“Get some things together because we are getting the hell out of the city now.”
“But D, the Bus
doesn’t come by for ten more minutes, what’s the rush?” Victoria asks him, stepping back into the apartment from the window that leads to the fire escape.
“We’re not taking the bus. Grab just a few essentials, maybe a change of clothes, some food if we have to camp out, nothing else. I’ll get us some wheels. And hurry!!” Dante adds, grabbing his .357 Magnum firing Desert
Eagle and two spare clips out of his sock drawer, sliding the heavy handgun into his shorts’ waistband and stuffing the clips in his right pocket, his wallet and cell phone going into the left.
Hearing Victoria rummaging in the kitchen, Dante heads back out onto the street, noting as he does so that the yellow-brown haze has gotten closer, moving with the prevailing winds towards them.
Looking down 2
nd Avenue as he exits his building’s main door, Dante can see nothing suitable just waiting to be taken, and he jobs around the corner onto 14
th street.
Five cars down the street,
Michaels sees an older model Ford
Fairlane convertible, with the top down, parked on this side of the street and facing west, opposite the other cars parked facing towards him.
The massive two door vehicle is white on top, has a gold accent stripe just below the door handle on the door, and is black below that on the sides.
It also looks to be in great condition, and unattended.
He jogs over to it, looking around surreptitiously, but no one seems to be paying any attention to him as he nears the antique land yacht.
Coming even with the right quarter panel, Dante can see that this is the rare 500
Skyliner retractable hardtop version of the classic
Fairlane.
He grins, and, after another quick look around, slips around the car and dives opens the driver’s door.
It only takes him fifteen seconds to
hotwire the ancient car’s ignition, a trick he had picked up on these streets long ago.
With the classic Ford now running, Dante glances around again to see if anyone has taken offence to him claiming the car, but again no one seems to notice or care, and he sees Victoria looking around for him.
He yells out her name, but she seems not to hear, as a mutual friend of theirs, Jarrod, or J-Rod on the street, is walking towards her from across 2
nd Ave.
Leaving the car running, Dante stands up and jumps over the passenger door, sprinting towards his
fiancé and yelling her name.
Down 14
th street to the east, Dante can see people just falling over on the sidewalks and notices cars swerving onto the sidewalks and into each other as the yellowish cloud washes over them, less than a block away from him now.
Reaching Victoria’s side, Dante grabs her arm and starts to tow her towards the still-running
Fairlane, waving to Jarrod to hurry up and come with them.
While physically hauling Vic down the street with him, Dante takes the backpack from her and tosses it into the back seat of the Ford as they approach it.
As they near the rear of the car, Dante releases Victoria’s arm and heads around the big car, getting into the driver’s seat once again.
Victoria, free of her fiance’s grip, waves J-Rod over, and, when he pauses, she starts to go to him to help him into the car.
Dante, seeing them in the
rearview mirror, revs the big V8 under the hood to get their attention.
It is in the rectangular mirror that he sees J-Rod fall, twitching, to the street less than forty yards away. In
what had to be instants but seemed like minutes, his nose, eyes, and mouth all started running while he convulsed, then he lay still. All down the street, hundreds of people twitched, quivered, or lay still in puddles of their own making.
Michaels screams at Victoria to run, and, as she turns to head for him and the Ford, she slips, her eyes wide as saucers in horror at what she has just seen.
When she starts to stand back up, Dante knows it is too late, as she stumbles, drooling, and reaches out for him.
Knowing in instants that there is nothing he can do, Dante
Michaels slams his foot down on the
Fairlane’s gas pedal, swerving into the chaotic traffic, seeing the brown-yellow haze closing over them when he is sparing a look back for his fallen
compadre and fiance.
J-rod seemed small and extremely pale in death, which was strange because in life the man had been bigger and blacker than Michael Clarke Duncan. Victoria, writhing on the ground,
didn’t look near the six months pregnant he knew she was.
With a last glance back, Dante shuts off his heart and lets his survival instincts take over, tears hazing his vision.
Realizing that, whatever it is that is attacking his city, it is airborne, Dante hits the switch to raise the retracted hard top, even as he is pulling into traffic.
Within moments, the black top has locked into place, grabbing the windshield frame, and Dante is rolling up the car’s side windows and checking to be sure all the blow-through vents are shut.
It is less than a mile and a quarter down 12
th Street to the turn onto 8
th Ave, which Dante takes nearly on two wheels, sometimes bashing other cars out of the way in his haste.
All he can think of is getting off the island and escaping the certain death he has seen behind him.
Dante soon loses count of the number of cabs,
Beamers,
Benzes,
Toyotas, and even a
NYPD cruiser that he has either sideswiped or brushed out of the way on his mad dash north, thinking only to get to the Lincoln tunnel off the island.
He notices Madison Square Garden out of the corner of his right eye as he passes it, but it is almost all he can do to keep most of his attention on the traffic in front of him while also noticing the yellow-brown cloud of death closing in both in front of and behind him as the prevailing winds blow it northwest over the most populous island on earth.
Apparently the aircraft that had dropped the gas canisters, for that is what Dante assumes has happened, did so in a line straight up the eastern side of Manhattan, all along its length.
Crossing through the red light on 34
th street,
Michaels almost breathes a sigh of relief as he realizes he is now in Hell’s Kitchen, and almost to his destination.
At one point in the late 1950s, someone had had the bright idea to try and rename the Hell’s Kitchen area as Clinton, and it even says that on what few maps showed the area at the time, but no one used the name, with the exception of real estate types. It had been, and would always be, Hell’s Kitchen to anyone familiar with the area.
And, thanks to Daredevil and Marvel comics, to quite a few people who had never been to Manhattan, as well.
Just before turning onto 39
th Street, Dante watches one of the omnipresent tourist helicopters plunge out of the sky, obviously out of control, crash into the New York Times building.
The explosion is surprisingly small, compared to what seems to be the Hollywood conception, and Dante winces at the impact before turning his attention to taking the corner ahead at nearly fifty.
He has gone less than a block before he notices that the access to the Lincoln Tunnel is packed, so
Michaels, struck by a sudden inspiration, slams the Ford into reverse, the big three hundred horse V-8 smoking the rear tires as he stomps the gas, aiming, in reverse, into the oncoming traffic before cranking the steering wheel to
the left and shifting from reverse to second gear.
By the time the big
Skyliner has stopped skidding and the tires have once again gained grip to propel the vehicle forward, Dante has it aimed north on 9
th Avenue and his speed is increasing as he keeps the pedal matted.
Of course, 9
th Ave is a one way street, and
Michaels is heading the wrong way, a fact that the
Manhattanites loudly remind him of with their horns as he
jukes and weaves the
Fairlane 500 towards and around them at nearly suicidal speeds.
He manages to make it the two blocks to 41st street without killing himself or anyone else, and takes the turn onto 41st at sixty miles an hour, the rear end of the massive Ford fishtailing as he does so.
Instead of slowing down, Dante mashes the accelerator, letting the three hundred and twelve cubic inch engine force the rear end into obedience. He knows that this move tends to work better on front wheel drive cars, but, on the narrow streets of Manhattan, he won’t have far to slide before the
Skyliner’s massive rear end would hit parked car and straighten out anyway.
His luck holds and he is able to power through the fishtail before hitting anything, but is soon sliding intentionally again, having thrown the Ford into a right turn to merge onto 10
th Avenue heading north.
Surprised at the relatively light traffic for this time of morning, Dante lets the big
Fairlane have her head as he aims the car uptown.
Dante stays on 10
th Ave all the way until 46
th street, which he slides the big car onto, seeing his destination, a famous landmark of the city, straight ahead.
Michaels roars the
Fairlane down West 46
th Street and slices across the startled and panic-stricken traffic on 12
th Ave and the Hudson River
Greenway, skidding the
Fairlane to a stop beside the massive USS Intrepid.
Shutting the engine off, Dante scans the area outside the car, seeing the malicious cloud closing in but not quite to him yet.
Moving as fast as he is able, he grabs his Desert Eagle and
iPod and stuffs them into the backpack Victoria had loaded with supplies back at the apartment, then opens the car’s door and sprints for the white access stairwell leading up to the Intrepid’s gangway, sprinting at full speed past the startled tourists and attendants yelling for his attention, trying to get him to pay for his admission.
Michaels doesn’t even bother to acknowledge them as he bulls his way onto the carrier, then heads deeper into the decommissioned vessel.
He knows the yellow-brown cloud had been less than a hundred yards from the pier when he had dashed onto the ship, and he knows there is possibly only one place left in the city, here, on the Intrepid, that he can survive.
There are no crowds in this part of the ship, as most people tend not to be too interested in anything outside the main flight deck and the exhibits set up in the hangar bays.
But Dante’s great-grandfather had told him stories of World War II, and how he had served on an Essex class carrier.
When he was younger, Dante had looked up all the info he could on the old ships, and had toured the Intrepid more than a few times in his younger days, as well, just after the big ship had returned to the city back in 2008.
Now outside the public areas, Dante closed and locked every hatch he came to leading to the galley.
As he locks the Galley hatch by cranking the large wheel, Dante can smell a hint of camphor, a strange smell for a decommissioned museum ship.
Tightening down the door,
Michaels heads to the back of the galley and enters the freezer, locking himself in.
He hears the hiss of the gasket around the door sealing him in as he does so.
Now he knows he just has to wait.
He
doesn’t know a lot about gas attacks, but is sure the city is experiencing one, and is positive he has read somewhere that all known chemical airborne agents dissipate within three days.
Sitting down on the metal floor, he looks around the massive room, larger than his first apartment, and is almost positive he will have enough air for that long.
He pulls the blue backpack off his shoulder and rummages through it to see what Vic had packed for them.
Bottled water, candy bars, some canned fruit, but, of course, no can opener, a couple paperback novels, a
flashlight with extra batteries are on the top of the pile, next to his hand cannon and
iPod.
Digging deeper into the backpack, his hands touch silk, and, almost against his will, he pulls the red blouse out of the bag.
Holding it to him, Dante finally lets go and starts to cry.
He had waited for four days, just to be sure.
He had run out of candy on day two, books on day three, and water this morning.
Plus, boredom and curiosity had overcome his fear enough that he felt he needed to get outside. Besides, the freezer area was starting to stink from the corner farthest away, which he had used as a makeshift toilet.
Laboriously, as he was weak from both malnourishment and exhaustion, Dante retraced his path through the
Intrepid, unlocking the doors he had locked back on the 6th.
He had just unlocked and opened the last of the doors he had closed when a sickly sweet smell became apparent to him.
He knew he should know what the smell was, but he couldn’t place it, even though it became stronger the closer to the public areas of the ship he traveled.
He found the first body just past the machinist’s shop.
It was bloated and starting to decompose.
It was also the source of the smell Michaels had noticed.
In the hangar bay, there were dozens more.
The smell was awful, but nothing compared to the stench that assaulted him once he stepped onto the deck of the USS Intrepid.
The winds were blowing the charnel-house stench of the city directly towards him.
Dante fell to his knees and retched.
Once he had collected himself, he staggered on wobbly legs back over to the entryway he had used to board the ship, only a few days ago, but in a different lifetime.
Stepping over the bodies slumped on the stairs, Dante made it back to the Ford, bashed, dented, and scarred from his mad dash across the city.
He supposed it really was his car, now.
He pushed the body of a teen girl off the hood where she had fallen in her death spasm and gets into the Fairlane’s driver’s seat.
He checks the wires he had exposed, twists them back together, and is somewhat amazed when the car starts right up.
Leaving the Intrepid’s pier much more slowly than he had arrived, Dante carefully steers the Ford up 12th Avenue, trying to avoid as many of the crashed cars and sprawled bodies as he can. He doesn’t even try to head south, knowing that the Lincoln Tunnel was probably little more than a mausoleum now.
He is also trying not to breathe through his nose, as the mixture of decay, excrement, vomit, blood, and heat makes for a noxious cocktail.
Everywhere he looks, Dante Michaels can see the dead and soiled bodies of what had, just four days ago, been millions of New Yorkers and tourists.
Along the Hudson he can also see ferries that have run out of fuel or run into the piers, and, as 12th Ave becomes New York 9A and the Henry Hudson Parkway, he sees the first of what he knows must be hundreds of light sightseeing aircraft and helicopters crashed into the city, this one nothing more than the burnt hulk of what once might have been a Twin Beech.
Many of the buildings had been scarred from impacts with either aircraft or birds, and there isn’t one without some kind of broken or smudged window.
It takes him three hours of dodging bodies and nudging cars aside with the big Ford’s front end to get the seven miles to the George Washington Bridge.
At the foot of the bridge, he scares the living hell out of a New Jersey Public Works crew at the foot of the bridge, who are loading bodies into a lineup of dumptrucks, presumable to be taken away for burial, and had not seen another living being, certainly not one LEAVING the city.
+ + + + + +
Shaking himself slightly, Ronin pushes the memories away as he turns the completely-rebuilt Fairlane onto the Brooklyn Bridge and prepares to leave the city behind again.
The bridge is the only way into or out of the city these days, and is hardly ever busy. In fact, Ronin Michaels only passes one tour bus, belonging to Necropolis Tours, one of the few companies still offering tours of the city to the morbid, as he rolls across the bridge over Hudson River.
From security camera footage and the accounts of the crew of a news helicopter that had been flying out of the city at the time of the attack, a story of what had happened had been pieced together.
The Chinks had modified an Air China Airbus A330-200 from its normal passenger role to that of a toxic bomber, and the twin engined jet had dropped thirty Soman canisters over the eastern edge of the city. Each of the hundred-gallon canisters had been rigged for an air burst, and had detonated at three hundred feet above the city.
The ten mile an hour winds from the southeast had done the rest, spreading the Soman across the island, the steel canyons causing eddies and whorls in many areas, like all of the parks across the city, where the concentrations had been slightly higher, not that it mattered.
The city never had a chance.
Of the ten million people known to be living in New York City at the time, four thousand and fifty two are known to have survived the attack. Almost all of them had been on the west side of the city and able to get out via the bridges before they had become snarled and jammed.
Estimates are that there were anywhere up to twenty thousand tourist fatalities as well.
Nearly six hundred people remain unaccounted for but are believed to be in wrecks sunk in the Hudson river.
The US Government came in and sterilized the city over the course of two years, but no one would move back in.
Five years after the Soman attacks, Manhattan was declared a National Historic Site and is listed as both a ghost town and graveyard.
However, the business that had lived in the city went on. All the major news outlets had moved across the Hudson and set up shop in New Jersey, keeping their old names in memoriam to the dead city. Wall street and most of its associated businesses are now located in Baltimore, but still ironically called the New York Stock Exchange.
The first thing Dante Michaels had done once he had left the city was ingest as much food as he could find. The second was to enlist. He may not have had any friends or family alive anymore, but he was damned if he was going t just let the Chinks get away with killing everyone he had ever known or cared about.
