Escape From New York (2 page)

Then the world came apart around him.

The lighting turned deep red, the color of blood, pulsing in unison with the throb of his bad eye. The alarm horns began clanging loudly, filling the hallway to monkey house clamor, jangling the senses.

Plissken didn’t even slow down. He was locked on now, moving for the light, wishing he wasn’t wearing that bulky uniform over his fatigues.

The hallway began to fill from the floor up with a light blue mist. Gas, always gas. Plissken covered his mouth and nose with his large hand and kept running.

The bells were pounding at him now, overpowering, trying to drive the thoughts right out of his mind. But he was Snake Plissken, and it would take more than a little sound and a little nerve gas to slow him down. It would take some big, mean son of a bitch with a riot gun at point blank range.

He broke through the hallway and into the lobby. Straight steel and glass, two stories tall, a cold and dead cocoon. There were cameras everywhere, and they all rotated to study him as he hurried through their domain—the chisel rough man with one eye just like them.

Tearing at the snaps of his disguise, Plissken raced toward the vators at the far end of the room. His teeth were clenched with the eye pain and the alarm sounds that stuffed his head full like a piñata. He skidded up to the vators, crashing into the one that had ROOF EXIT written across its sliding panels.

Punching the button, he threw the satchel in when the doors slid open. He jumped in after, already pulling the overalls off his shoulders.

The doors closed, toning down the alarm to a muffled clicking. He hit the roof button and the machine started up. His breath was coming shallowly as he tore off the rest of the uniform and tossed it away from him onto the ground. He pulled off the cap and his hair sprang free, spilling almost down to his shoulders.

The floor indicator lights eased slowly up the wall grid. Plissken was tensed like a bowstring with the waiting, but he knew that he needed the time to get his breath back. He began to take in air more deeply, steeling himself, calming. He picked up the satchel from the floor and tucked it securely under his arm.

The vator shuddered to a stop. There was a second’s pause. Then the door slid open to—blinding light!

Squinting, he charged through the opening. The first wave of heat hit him as soon as he was out of the vator’s protective shell. He opened his eye full. The Colorado desert stretched out wide and empty all around him: yellow sand, reflecting afternoon heat, carpeting to the distant mountains.

The vator doors slammed shut behind him, and the sound made him start, spinning quickly. He went around full circle. No blackbellies. Good. The slash of his lips tightened into a grin.

The transfer station was set off to his left, its concrete pillbox shining hotly in the afternoon glare. The sun was stoking up good today, turning the gas-soaked atmosphere a pale shade of lavender.

Plissken broke for the station, the driver back out and ready in his hand. He kicked high as he ran, trying to keep his footing on the uneven ground. A fine spray of sand arced out from his feet with every step.

He turned once to glance back at the vator box, the only outward sign of the bank building beneath. No one was coming yet; he was still in good shape.

He got up to the massive bunker door and jammed the driver into the ID slot. Nothing.

“Damn,” Plissken whispered.

He took it out and plunged it in again, jiggling the handle. It didn’t budge.

“Come on, honey,” he coaxed. “Just for me.”

He looked back at the distant vator. The outer doors were beginning to slide open. He jerked his head back to the slot

Stepping back a pace, he took a deep breath then kicked out viciously with the heel of a jungle-booted foot. He forced the driver into the slot mechanism up to the handle. The machine sparked for a few seconds, then groaned open with a hydraulic hum.

Plissken moved inside and got the door shut just as the first blackbelly emerged from the bank vator. He hurried the heavy door closed, then jammed the driver into the space between the door and the frame to freeze it up.

Safe . . . for a while.

The inside of the transfer station was dark and cool. A soft blue illuminated arrow pointed down the stairs to the platform. Plissken navigated the stairs. They were glowing gently from the luminescence of several tiny wink lights inset within.

As he reached the bottom step, he could hear the blackbellies pounding on the outer door. They’d get through eventually, but it would take time. The transfer bunkers were designed to withstand assault

The platform was quiet and empty. It was lit to a soft yellow vapor haze and seemed to stretch out forever. Plissken walked easily across the concrete floor, moving for the destination panel.

The panel was set in an alcove near the foot of the stairs. He moved within and checked the big board. The lights moved sequentially across a stationary grid, and showed the closest hummers and their terminals.

There was a hummer moving on line to Eugene, Oregon, that would reach the station soon. He punched up those coordinates on the machine, then shoved the credit disc of one George Moropy into the slot. He had absolutely no intention of taking the Eugene hummer, but punched it up because that’s what they’d figure him to do. The war was still being fought heavily in the west, which left a lot of badlands for people like Plissken to lose themselves in. And west he would go. But not right away.

After the Eugene transaction had rung up green on the viewer, Plissken punched up the Atlanta coordinates, and bought the trip with Lynda Millford’s card. Bill Taylor was waiting in Atlanta, and he’d take care of their western connections.

Plissken moved back out on the platform, standing by the eastbound tubes. The tubes were thick plastic, nearly opaque. Occasionally a hummer would swish through, pinging on the internal tube rings, showing up on the outside as a speeding band of bright light. Then it would get quiet again. The tubes were a rich man’s conveyance, and that very exclusive club got smaller and smaller all the time.

A hummer screeched to a stop on the other side of the platform, the westbound side. The Eugene express. Plissken turned to watch it. A section of the tube slid away and a pleasant but authoritative male voice said: “Eugene, Portland, Salem and points west. All aboard please.”

There was silence for a minute, then the message was repeated. The hummer stayed around for a while longer, then the doors slid quietly closed and the machine pinged away. Plissken figured that the blackbellies would trace that one. He hoped that they’d leave the next one alone.

It wasn’t five minutes before the Atlanta transfer came along. Plissken boarded gratefully, and sat himself down in the soft, white “G” seat in his very own compartment. Plissken always traveled first class. He figured that Lynda Millford could afford it.

Quiet music drifted gently down from somewhere, and the computer spoke to him. “Going to Atlanta?” it asked.

“Yes,” he answered, leaning his head back against the seat “Atlanta.”

“Fasten your seatbelt please.”

Plissken fastened his seatbelt, but not too much.

“Oh, come now,” the machine said. “You can do better than that.”

Plissken did better.

“That’s good. Well be underway in a matter of seconds. After acceleration, can we get you a drink?”

Snake Plissken watched the wall close up around him. “Yes,” he replied. “A drink would be nice. Make it a double.”

IN THE TUBES

October 21
10:07
P.M.

Plissken had picked up the name Snake in the service, and it had stuck so hard that now there was nobody left alive on the face of the planet who knew his real first name.

He had been a hot shot college boy when they commissioned him as a lieutenant and sent him to the Russian front. Everyone had been real excited about the war when it first came around. It had been, after all, a long time since the last real confrontation and everyone needed to flex their ego muscles a little.

It had started small and built somewhere in the Middle East. It was the gradual build-up that somehow managed to keep the nukes out of it. There had been a conference in Stockholm early on, where the principal nations agreed to avoid the nuclear exchange to protect the nonaligned nations of the world. That was just a smoke screen, of course. In actuality, nobody wanted their shit blown away finally and completely.

So they decided on something else, something that sounded very harmless and sophisticated. They decided on chemicals. Plissken smiled when he thought about that. He was watching the contact points slide past his window, and trying to ignore the pain in his bad eye.

The chemicals were nasty. He supposed that there was no way of killing that wasn’t nasty underneath it all, but the chemical clouds that continually floated in the atmosphere killed in slow motion. No one was untouched by them. They rolled in quietly, odorlessly and tastelessly, eating away bits of brain cells and nervous systems as they did. The chemicals made people crazy before they killed them. There were crazy people running around all over the place. Lots of them. Millions of them.

“Atlanta Station in five minutes,” the computer voice said.

He pulled his hair back in some semblance of order and checked his watch. A bit ahead of schedule. He looked down at the satchel on his lap.

They called him Snake because he had a knack for slithering out of trouble. He commanded a search and destroy squad that had the best record of success in the entire Russian campaign. No one could figure out why the Snake did so well; but the Snake knew. Some people built things with their hands. Others could compose beautiful music or had a head for figures. Snake Plissken had a talent for making war. It was in his blood.

“Atlanta Station,” chimed the voice. “Thank you for tubing with us.”

The compartment roared around him, and the rush of decel strained him forward against the straps. The thing stopped with a slight jerk, and Plissken was out of his belt and standing before the tube hatched open.

When the wall section slid away, he stepped right out onto the platform, looking back and forth. No one. No blackbellies. No nothing.

He didn’t realize that he had been holding his breath until the air rushed out of him. He smiled and went looking for Taylor.

Taylor had been with him that morning in the CO’s office in Helsinki when they first heard of the so-called “Leningrad Ruse.” It was early, bleak fall and the low, rolling gray clouds, distended with gas, were dropping a lethal acid rain onto ground already barren and dead from floating poisons. They were forced to go around for weeks at a time in their gas gear, speaking to one another through mikes in their masks.

So it was on that morning when they stood in a tiny office with a man from Special Projects named Captain Berrigan. At least, that’s what he said his name was. Berrigan never took off his mask, not even in the relative safety of that secured bunker. Plissken had always thought that to be a shame, for he never got to see what the man looked like; and he had thought for a long time that he would certainly have liked to find Captain Berrigan and gut him with his buck knife.

He walked a good pace through the deserted spoke of the terminal. After a time, he began seeing people. There weren’t very many, but there were still enough to make him feel safe and normal.

The spoke terminated in an escalator. He took it down to the main lobby, where most of the arriving and departing passengers were milling about, feeling secure in their sheer numbers. There was some Security around the tv lounges and rows of food and drink machines, but they were there to protect the property, not mess with the karma. Plissken walked easily, just one of the folks.

He caught sight of a sign on a concrete wall. PACIFIC EXPRESS, it said, and pointed down a corridor. He followed the arrow. That’s where he’d find Taylor.

Captain Berrigan had told them that one of the Allies’ top Intelligence officers had been taken prisoner by the Ruskies and was being detained in Leningrad. He said that they had to go in and get him out before the man revealed secrets vital to the entire war effort. Plissken’s squad had been especially picked because of their phenomenal record. It was a great honor.

Neither he nor Taylor thought much of the plan; it sounded too much like suicide. But duty was duty. So early the nest morning, they went low over the Baltic Sea and hit Leningrad with the sun. There were fifty of them in Gulffire gliders screaming in at rooftop level, while air support drew fire on the east side of the city.

Leningrad was the Ruskie supply point, and was consequently the most heavily defended city in western Russia. Plissken and his people flew into the maelstrom, and it was far worse than any human mind could possibly imagine. He remembered it mostly as oranges—burning, sizzling oranges—screaming fire flowers.

Success was impossible. Survival nearly so. When it was clear to Plissken that they couldn’t get the man out, they plastic charged the building that he was being held in and buried him under five hundred tons of rock and plaster.

Sometime during the fighting a frag cracked Plissken’s left goggle, and the nerve gas went to work on his eye. Somehow he ordered the withdrawal and got back to base. It was like his whole head was on fire, bright orange fire. When the gliders touched down again, there were only two of them left. Just two.

He spent a month in the hospital before they even let Taylor come visit. The man was in a leg cast; his knee had been shattered in a crash landing getting back into Helsinki. He was pale like an albino when he came in, and his eyes were just as red.

“It was all a trick,” Taylor said to him there in that sterile hospital room. “A lousy, fuckin’ trick.”

It turned out that the “Intelligence officer” was actually a corporal in masquerade who let himself be captured to give false information. Plissken’s squad had been sent in just to lend the whole thing an air of authenticity. To make matters worse, it didn’t work. The man hadn’t fooled them for a minute.