Eventually we came to a room full of turbine equipment-long dormant, thankfully, or we would have been electrocuted. The big round machines lay in a row like eggs or sleeping forms between us and a wrought iron spiral staircase that lead upward into misty darkness. Our rubberized boots didn’t clang so badly on the steps but the water that poured out of the folds of our suits as we ascended made for a sloshing, dripping, noisy climb. At the top of the staircase sat a room made of brick, containing only a few sticks of broken furniture and a stained mattress in one corner. There were windows but they showed nothing but sloppily-joined bricks. There was one door, a big locked steel fire door that was our next destination. Assuming it lead anywhere.
Gary had built his tower across a big patch of Central Park without, apparently, thinking much about what was in the way. He had torn down many of the park’s buildings for bricks but others-those near the Great Lawn-had simply been incorporated whole into the structure. Belvedere Castle, one of my favorite places in New York City, had become little more than a buttress for one enormous curtain wall. On the uptown side of the tower the southern Reservoir gatehouse had found a similar purpose. It had been built right into the tower, something Jack had seen in the video product we took from the Predator. What Gary didn’t know, we hoped, was that there was a tunnel leading from the south gatehouse to one of the transverses. The tunnel we had just come through.
It was possible that the door we faced now could have been sealed off during construction. It was also possible that it opened directly into Gary’s personal apartments. Or into a guard room full of violent corpses. There was no way of knowing without trying it.
This was our plan, then. Ayaan would distract the dead-drawing as many of Gary’s thousands of soldiers to her as she could, holding out as long as she might on top of the Museum of Natural History. Simultaneously Jack and I would break into Gary’s fortress, kill any of the living dead we found inside (including Gary) and get the survivors to a place where Kreutzer could come pick them up in the Chinook. It was the best idea we’d come up with. I was committed to it, ready to give my life for its success. We both were.
Jack didn’t waste any time. He grabbed the doorknob and turned. The door swung open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a dark brick-lined corridor beyond. None of the dead appeared out of nowhere to attack us. Dry air blew across us, blowing away all but a few tendrils of mist rising from the spiral staircase.
Jack shrugged out of his heavy pack and dropped it to the floor, then helped me do the same. He unzipped my pack and started drawing out long silver cylinders with nozzles on their ends, the kind you would use to store compressed gas.
I had never seen them before. “What are those?” I whispered, my voice sounding inaudible even to me inside my faceshield.
Jack looked up, his calm face framed perfectly by the square window of transparent plastic. “There’s been a change of plan,” he said.
David Wellington - Monster Island
Monster Island
Chapter Thirteen