The Coming Storm Read online

  He reloaded again but held his fire. It wouldn’t do any good. The fuckers had nowhere else to go. They’d rather risk a bullet than drown in the storm surge.

  Frazier lowered his rifle and helped Barr to his feet. Then he faced the half-dozen soldiers who’d just stepped off the rear ramp of the Stryker. “Fan out and guard the gate! And cover it with the Stryker’s machine gun too!” He pointed at the big fifty-caliber gun mounted on the vehicle’s roof. He’d raised his voice to maximum volume, loud enough for everyone in the mob to hear. “If any of these scumbags so much as touches the fence, blow his fucking head off!” Then he turned to Hendricks. “You take care of Barr, see if he needs a medic. I’m going to the train tracks.”

  The corporal shouted, “Yes, sir!” but Frazier had already started running toward the Bay Parkway station. The stairway going up to the tracks was only two hundred feet from the checkpoint.

  The elevated tracks ran perpendicular to the district’s fence, which extended under the train line. Another fence ran over the line, blocking anyone from using the tracks to escape the district. Next to this upper fence the FSU had built a sentry tower, which loomed twenty feet above the tracks and forty feet above Bay Parkway. It was an ideal position for observing the checkpoint, and for firing on the crowd, if that proved necessary.

  There were two FSU corporals in the sentry tower, Murphy and Paulson. Frazier had assigned them to guard duty at the start of their shift, and now he waved to them as he climbed the steps to the tower’s platform. Murphy was peering through a pair of infrared binoculars, keeping watch over the elevated tracks to the south. Paulson stood behind a machine gun, an air-cooled fifty-caliber Browning M2HB, which rested on a tripod and pointed at the people in the street below.

  Frazier had already radioed them from the Stryker, telling Murphy and Paulson to look for a man and a woman walking on the tracks. As soon as he reached the platform, he asked, “Any sign of them?” and both corporals shook their heads. He wanted to check for himself—the injections had also improved his eyesight—but before he could ask for the binoculars, he noticed another man sprawled in the corner of the platform.

  The guy lay on his back, unconscious, his face very pale and his right arm bent at an unnatural angle. It was Allen Keating. The reporter from The New York Fucking Times.

  Frazier pointed at him. “What’s he doing here?”

  Murphy shrugged. “We didn’t know where else to put him, sir. He passed out a few minutes after you left.”

  “Is he sick? He don’t look too good.”

  “His arm bled a lot after you broke it. I think you messed up one of his arteries or something.” Murphy grinned. “But don’t worry, Lieutenant. Reporters are like cockroaches. No one really cares if you step on one.”

  Paulson chuckled behind his machine gun, but Frazier didn’t laugh. If this asshole reporter died on them, Colonel Grant would demand an explanation, and the colonel hated foul-ups of any kind. At the very least, Frazier would have to invent a cover story. And get his men to back him up.

  But he wasn’t going to worry about it now. He grabbed the binocs from Murphy and gazed down the elevated line, all the way to the next station at 25th Avenue. No woman in a nightshirt, and no man either. They’d probably climbed down from the tracks. In fact, there was a good chance they were mingling with the other ragheads on Bay Parkway.

  Frazier stepped toward Paulson, who was gazing at the crowd through the Browning’s gun sight. “Is there anyone matching the description down there? Young woman with short black hair, light brown skin? Wearing a long gray nightshirt?”

  Paulson smiled but didn’t take his eye off the crowd. “Sorry to disappoint you, sir, but most of those shitheads are male. And most of the females are wrinkled old skanks. There are a few young homegirls down there, but no one in a nightshirt. The only one who comes close is that bitch on the sidewalk, see? But she’s wearing some kind of hooker outfit.”

  He pointed, and Frazier started at the sight of her. It was the African woman he’d noticed before, the addict from Somalia with the bikini top and the track marks on her arms. She was wandering in a daze at the back of the crowd, getting jostled by the others. But the boy wasn’t with her.

  Frazier looked at her through the binoculars. The woman’s face was blank—no fear, no panic. It was a junkie trance, so deep and complete that she’d forgotten all about her son. Frazier scanned the crowd around her, looking for the boy. Just two hours ago, the kid had been clutching his mother’s hand, holding on for dear life, his round face shining under the searchlights. But now he was nowhere in sight.

  Frazier adjusted the binocs to get a wider view. He scrutinized the whole crowd, all the assholes standing behind the chain-link fence. Where the hell is he? Did he wander off? Frazier knew this was stupid, getting so anxious about some random kid he’d never seen before tonight, who didn’t even look that much like Andy. The little fucker wasn’t even white, for Christ’s sake. But Frazier couldn’t stop it. He felt the ache in his chest again, like a bayonet between his ribs. It was so sharp, it made him dizzy. His vision blurred.

  Then the memories came back, impossibly crisp and solid: Andy in the backseat of their car, struggling for breath. His mouth gaping, his tongue hanging out. His small hand gripping Frazier’s so tight. And Grandma driving their shitty old car like crazy, barreling down the gravel road toward the hospital.

  Jesus Christ, it’s happening again! HE’S DYING AGAIN!

  “Uh, Lieutenant? Are you okay? You—”

  Frazier dropped the binoculars and spun around, swinging his arms. His fists hit something and knocked it over, but he couldn’t see it. All he could see was the gravel road to Cassville, the thick woods flying by on either side of the car. And his brother’s contorted face, turning blue and purple.

  Then he heard a strange noise, the sound of a diesel engine starting up. It wasn’t another memory from Cassville, Missouri. This noise came from the street below, from Bay Parkway. At first he thought it was the Stryker’s turbo-diesel engine, but the noise was rougher, more grating, the harsh sound of an old truck engine that hadn’t been started in a long time. And that’s what made it so strange. Who the hell was driving a truck through South Brooklyn tonight?

  He shook his head, hard, trying to get back to normal. Grant had warned him that the drugs might have “moderate side effects” but this was a lot worse than moderate. It felt like a piece of his brain—the piece that held his memories—had expanded across his skull and taken over everything else. He closed his eyes and shook his head even harder, rattling and rearranging all the pieces inside. Goddamn it! Get back in the right order!

  Then Frazier opened his eyes. He could see again, thank God, but what he saw wasn’t good. Corporal Murphy lay on the platform of the sentry tower, his helmet knocked off his head. His eyes were rolled up in their sockets, the side of his head was bashed in, and blood was streaming from his ears. Frazier had walloped him without realizing it, and now the corporal was just as pale and unconscious as the Times reporter, whose right arm was mashed under Murphy’s left leg. And Paulson was staring wide-eyed at all three of them, probably wondering if he should swing the machine gun around and point it at his commander.

  Then a shot rang out, and Paulson shuddered. A bullet aimed at the sentry tower struck the back of his neck and blasted through his throat.

  Frazier dove for cover, landing on the floor even before Paulson’s body hit it. A second bullet whizzed above them, then a third and a fourth. Then Frazier heard the old truck engine coughing and grinding, revving up to an unbearable shriek.

  He lifted his head and peered down at Bay Parkway, just in time to see the truck smash into the fence.

  SIX

  Jenna did what Derek told her to do. But at the same time, she watched and waited. She was ready to bolt as soon as she got the chance.

  When Derek told her to walk north on the D line tracks, she walked north. When he told her to leave the tracks at the 25th Avenue s
top, she followed him down to the street. And when he found the tractor trailer a block south of Bay Parkway and told her to get inside the truck’s cab, she obediently slid into the passenger seat. But she rested her arm near the door handle while Derek hot-wired the truck’s ignition and started the engine. As soon as he got distracted, she was going to open the door and jump out. She couldn’t outrun him—she’d seen how fast he was—but if she got enough of a head start, maybe she could find a place to hide. She had to at least try it, even if the odds were against her. If she got away, she could start looking for her father and brother and maybe find out where the FSU had taken them.

  As the truck began moving, though, the doors locked automatically. Derek pointed at the footwell on the passenger side of the cab, below the glove compartment. “Get down there. Scrunch all the way in. Things are gonna get hairy in a second.” Then he reached for the waistband of his jeans and pulled out the gun that used to belong to Keith, the now-deceased lunatic.

  “Whoa, whoa, hold on. What are you—”

  “I said, GET DOWN!” Derek glared and pointed the gun at her. The whites of his eyes were dark with blood, but she could see the reflections of the dashboard lights in them.

  Jenna didn’t think he’d actually shoot her. He wanted her to cure him, that’s why he’d kidnapped her. But the man was so desperate and unpredictable that she couldn’t be certain what he’d do next. So she slid out of her seat and squeezed into the footwell. She folded her legs to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees and cursed herself under her breath. You goddamn idiot! You should’ve jumped out of the truck before the doors locked!

  A moment later, Derek brought the tractor trailer to a stop. Then he raised the pistol and took careful aim out the driver-side window. Jenna couldn’t see what he was targeting, but she imagined the worst. Derek was good at killing. No, he was more than good—he was enhanced. He had unnatural abilities programmed into his cells.

  He fired four times in quick succession. Jenna covered her ears, but the shots still hammered her eardrums. Then Derek lowered the gun and stomped the gas pedal.

  The engine roared, and the truck lurched forward. Derek slammed his palm on the truck’s horn and leaned out the window, screaming, “OUT OF THE WAY!” at someone in the street. Alarmed, Jenna half-rose from the footwell to look out the windshield. But before she could see anything, the truck hit something solid. The impact threw her forward, and her head bashed against the glove compartment.

  She blacked out for a second. Or maybe five or ten seconds.

  When she came to, Derek was gone. He’d left her alone in the truck’s cab, crammed inside the footwell, her face pressed against the rubber floor mat. She lifted her head, and everything in the cab whirled around her—the steering wheel, the glove compartment, the empty passenger and driver seats, all careening in nauseous circles. But the noises were worse. Derek had left the driver-side door open, and through the gap Jenna could hear a sickening mix of screams and gunshots.

  She raised her head a little higher and saw hundreds of people rushing past the truck, their faces illuminated by blinding searchlights. It was a stampede of terrified men and women splashing across Bay Parkway and stumbling over a mangled pile of chain-link fence and razor wire, half-submerged in the floodwaters. The truck had knocked down a section of the FSU’s fence, and now the prisoners of the South Brooklyn District were leaping over the fallen barrier and making their escape.

  Jenna climbed onto the driver’s seat and peered through the windshield, looking for Derek. At first she couldn’t find him, but when she heard the next gunshot she turned toward the noise and saw him fire his pistol at an FSU officer. The cop’s face exploded under his helmet. The other officers swung their assault rifles toward Derek, but by the time they returned fire he was already gone. He darted and zigzagged through the terrified crowd, and then a few seconds later he was behind the cops, blasting away, aiming at all the gaps in their body armor.

  His skills were horrifying. Derek was operating at a different speed than everyone else, running faster, reacting quicker, taking advantage of the chaos and all the human shields around him. Jenna was an expert on brain physiology, and she could see that Derek’s mind was functioning at an accelerated pace, his brain cells signaling each other in microseconds, his cerebral lobes processing thoughts in an instant. His visual cortex had become so efficient that he could see things happening before any of the cops could. And the signals from his brain flowed so quickly to the nerves in his arms and legs that he could perform extraordinary feats of coordination, enabling him to dodge every obstacle and hit every target and slaughter the FSU men, one by one.

  Jenna knew that no chemical stimulant—not Dexedrine, not meth, not cocaine, not Ecstasy—could change mental performance so dramatically. But a genetic alteration could do it. That was her specialty, the genetics of brain functions. She’d studied it for twelve years in college and grad school and Rockefeller University’s Molecular Genetics Laboratory, where she’d manipulated the genes of lab rats to make them smarter and faster. And now it was obvious that another scientist in her field, maybe someone she knew, had dared to perform the experiments she’d objected to. Someone had made the same genetic changes to humans.

  She grimaced. Derek was literally inhuman. Judging from the enhancement of his abilities, Jenna guessed that hundreds of his genes had been altered, a significant percentage of his protein-coding DNA. Genetically, he wasn’t homo sapiens anymore. He was a different species entirely.

  The shock was so strong, it cleared her head. Her dizziness and nausea subsided, and in their place she felt a cold, calm certainty. Derek was even more dangerous than she’d thought. She had to get away from him now, while he was still busy fighting the FSU officers. It was her last, best chance.

  Jenna jumped out of the truck and landed in the floodwaters, soaking her borrowed sweatpants up to the knees. She stooped low beside the driver-side door, trying to stay unnoticed as she scoped out the safest route away from this nightmare. Heading west would definitely be a mistake. The Bay Parkway station lay in that direction, and there was a sentry tower on the elevated tracks. Going east wouldn’t work either; one of the FSU’s armored personnel carriers—Derek had called it a Stryker—was parked in the middle of the street, and it had a very large, nasty gun on its roof. But the street to the north looked clear, and most of the district refugees were running that way. All Jenna needed to do was join the throng and run like hell across Bensonhurst and Borough Park. She wouldn’t stop until she was out of Brooklyn altogether.

  She waited until a group of tall black men rushed past the truck, and then she caught up to them and slipped into the middle of the pack. She couldn’t see Derek through the scrum of bodies, but that was good; it meant he probably couldn’t see her either. The searchlights glared overhead, making Jenna all too visible to any FSU officer who might be scanning the crowd, but the circle of light covered only a short stretch of Bay Parkway. In a few seconds she would run beyond it and plunge back into the darkness. She was just fifty feet away.

  Then she heard a horrid rattling off to her left. A torrent of streaking lights poured down on the street, like shooting stars in miniature, glowing yellow and red and white. They zoomed in nearly straight lines from the sentry tower on the elevated tracks to the running mob on Bay Parkway.

  But they weren’t shooting stars. They were tracer rounds. The glowing bullets showered the crowd in front of Jenna. A dozen people staggered and shrieked and dropped headfirst into the floodwaters.

  She skidded and crashed into one of the tall men ahead of her. Someone in the sentry tower was firing at them. Some homicidal maniac with a fucking machine gun was mowing down the crowd, starting with the runners at the front. Jenna saw them fall in waves, the large-caliber bullets ripping through their bodies and shattering their skulls. The gunner slaughtered them methodically, first killing everyone at the leading edge of the crowd and then slowly pivoting the gun to cut down the people
farther back.

  Jenna turned around, but there were too many people jammed behind her. The refugees from the district were frozen, panicking, screaming. They couldn’t go forward, couldn’t turn back. Meanwhile, the machine gun swept its fire across Bay Parkway. It was a massacre, an extermination.

  She scrambled through the crowd, squirming between the hysterical men and women, desperate for a way out. But she wasn’t going to make it. Now the machine gun was targeting the heart of the mob, scything dozens of people just a few yards ahead of her, turning the flooded street into a river of corpses. They were falling everywhere Jenna looked. Their screams were almost as loud as the gunfire.

  Jenna went into a crouch and closed her eyes. She couldn’t watch anymore, couldn’t listen. She shut out all the horrible sights and sounds, and instead she pictured her father and brother. She imagined having dinner with them one last time, back in their apartment, safe and sound. She thought of the prayers her father always said before they started eating, and for the first time in ten years Jenna said a prayer too. Dear Allah, take care of Abbu and Raza, wherever they are! Don’t let anyone hurt them, please!

  Then someone grabbed her right arm and nearly yanked it out of its socket. An irresistible force pulled her to her feet and dragged her through a gap in the crowd that hadn’t been there a moment ago.

  It was Derek, of course. When Jenna opened her eyes, she saw him charging like a bull through the panicking mob, knocking everyone else aside and hauling her along at top speed. The machine gun rattled behind them and the victims shrieked and dropped, but Derek snatched her out of the killing zone and barreled down the flooded street, away from the sentry tower.

  Jenna stumbled after him, frantically pumping her legs and trying not to fall into the water. She felt grateful but exhausted, relieved but helpless. He’d saved her again, but for what?