Deadline Y2K (26 page)

Jody wrinkled her nose. “I don't think I understood a word you said, but it sounds bad.”

“Much worse than Chernobyl,” Judd said.

She bent over and read a few lines.

We should have did before this fix code.

Probe in high pressure valve two day ago

fail test but superior say no money to replace.

I am to shoot myself but have no gun.

Realizing the man in Murmansk was describing the machine that was going to kill him, Jody clutched her blouse. “Oh, God.”

“There's a billion stories on the naked planet,” Judd said. “This is just one.”

“What's gonna happen is gonna happen,” Carolyn said. “We can't get sentimental and still take care of business.”

They moved on to Ronnie's station, where her screens showed the flow of water into the city. Demand was normal for a Friday evening. People were taking showers and getting ready for the big night. Upstream, the reservoirs were full and operating as smoothly as possible for the oldest sanitary water supply system in the world, but the control center in Queens was in a frenzy. Having seen water supplies fall apart all over the world, the operators knew they were faced with a serious problem.

Ronnie shook her head and pointed to a stack of water bottles in the corner. “We have a tank on the roof with five thousand gallons, and another thousand in bottles in the basement. We're gonna need 'em. This is a lost cause.”

“You never know,” Carolyn cautioned.

“Yes, you do,” Ronnie shot back. “I do. I know. There's not going to be a problem getting water into the city. It's a gravity system. The problem is going to be getting the drainage and sewage out.”

“Ronnie's an optimist, you see,” Carolyn said, directing Jody to Bo's ConEd station.

“I apologize for being rude,” Bo said to Jody.

“Bo's nervous because this is the main event,” Carolyn drawled. “The Consolidated Edison Electrocution Society of Greater New York, founded by his very own self, Thomas Edison, renowned inventor of the electric chair. This is the hot seat, and Bo is the man who's gonna sit right here and save New York. Howd'ya like that? If he fails, we fry him. Ain't that right, Bo?”

“I ain't gonna save nothin' if we don't hear from Deep Volt.”

“That's right,” Carolyn said. “We have a little glitch.”

*   *   *

Donald Copeland had tried to cross Times Square and walk home that way but couldn't get through the crowds. He'd wandered across town in a daze, losing track of time in the process—
tempus fugit, yea brother.
His $12,000 Rolex was gone. He remembered stopping in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge, taking it off and cocking his arm, but then he'd shoved the watch into his pocket and walked on. Things were a little jumbled after that. People lined up at groceries and delicatessens, and signs in every store declared “Cash Only.” On Fifth Avenue somewhere in the twenties he'd come across a kid selling cans of beer for $10, and he'd traded the watch for a Miller Genuine Draft. He didn't want to know what time it was. It was dark. New York was crazy. The kid was happy. Unbelievable crowds packed every block in midtown. Fights. Drunks. Cops. People having sex in cars. It was Nero's Rome gone mad. On a TV in a store window he saw John Paul II's Rome gone equally mad. A millennium crazy had taken a potshot at the Pope, and as Copeland watched, the Italian police cornered the assassin who shot three cops and then killed himself. He saw a report that seemed to announce a severe nuclear accident in Russia, but he wasn't sure. Pressured by time to deliver the news raw and unedited, many disasters were being reported that never occurred, or reported with wild inaccuracy, making things look much worse than they actually were. None of the reporters understood or explained technical details, and there was no way to separate fact from fiction.

Without knowing quite how he got there, he found himself at 38th and Ninth Avenue in front of a saloon called the Mad Hatter's Sports Bar and Grill. A hand-printed banner stretched over the doorway: “End of the World Party Tonight.” Two young women in blue jeans and flashy jewelry pushed through the doors, giving him a snapshot of the crowded interior: TVs, laughter, a tambourine. He loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button on his shirt and miraculously found an empty stool at the bar.

Three bartenders were working at a furious pace, splashing liquor into glasses, squeezing lemons, grinding ice in blenders. Sweaty waitresses loaded trays and figured tabs without taking an eye off the eight large screens scattered around the large room.

“Scotch over,” he shouted over the racket. “Make it a double.”

As disastrous events around the world unfolded on TV, the youthful, drunken crowd was cheering. The screens presented Paris, the City of Light, in the dark. In the French capital, spotlights run by generators punched holes in the sky above the Champs-Élysées. The Arc de Triomphe glowed in the lonesome blue light of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The grand boulevard was a stream of car lights, but the buildings were black, the streetlights mere poles in the pavement. The camera caught the frightened eyes of a policeman trying to direct traffic at the moment he gave up and ran away, losing his
képi
in the process. Hysterical people were running in every direction. The shot from the center of the city was replaced by a succession of talking heads and then a shot of the Stade de France in the Parisian suburb of St. Denis. Built for the World Cup in 1998, the stadium was ablaze and surrounded by wildly careening automobile lights.

The delirious bar crowd exploded in laughter and cheers and chanted, “Fuck the French. Fuck the French.” It was weird and perverse and Copeland thought it made as much sense as anything else. A moment later, the director cut to an address by the President of France, who looked bewildered and badly shaken under the improvised lights. The bar crowd booed. Someone shouted, “No politicians! No politicians!” and a bartender flipped through the channels. Car wrecks, burning chemical plants, sinking barges in a river, families huddled in the freezing snow. Train traffic across the continent had slowed to a crawl, and all military air traffic in Western Europe was grounded after six members of a German Air Force squadron flew their F-16s into a Bavarian mountain. Hundreds of ships in the Mediterranean and Baltic Seas were adrift. North Sea oil rigs stopped pumping and one was afire.

A hullabaloo started in the back of the room, and everyone turned to look as a shirtless young man squirted lighter fluid on a laptop computer and set it on fire.

“Oh, shit,” shouted the chief bartender. “That's too much! Put that out!”

Old Blue was waiting fifty blocks north with another message from hell. Copeland had to go home. As he turned back to his drink, he was suddenly face-to-face with a pair of sultry brown eyes, full lips and firm breasts pressed against his chest.

“Happy New Year,” she said. “Isn't it wonderful? My name is Helen. Who are you?”

“Father Time,” he said, dropping his eyes to her cleavage.

“Are you wicked?” she asked. “Are you a bad boy?”

“I have to go home,” he said.

“To the little wife and kiddies? It's New Year's Eve. Give in to temptation. Be wicked.”

She kissed him, plunging her tongue into his mouth and grabbing his crotch, which caused him to spill his drink down her back.

“Oh,
Jesus,
” she screamed and broke away.

“Sorry.”

“Fuck
you.
”

He stumbled outside, took a deep breath, and started to walk. The crowds swirled around him. Are you wicked? What kind of question was that? What kind of person asked a question like that? He glanced into a bookstore and saw an entire window filled with books on wolves: zoology books, ecology books, Russian folk tales,
Never Cry Wolf, The Call of the Wild, Peter and the Wolf.
He had a sudden urge to howl, looked up and saw a half-moon rising above Manhattan. He opened his mouth and wailed as long and loud as he could. No one noticed because the entire world was wailing with him.

*   *   *

In the Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct, Captain Ed Garcia had a little more than he'd bargained for. When he'd told the fire commander that he wanted to attract every religious nut in New York and thus contain them in one place, he'd meant it figuratively. In the spirit of the moment, he'd forgotten that in New York, no matter what you said, enough people would take you at your word to fill a football stadium. After dark, the nature of the crowds changed. The bands stopped playing and families went home to escape the cold. Hundreds of drunks spilled over from midtown and began to arrive along with hard-core religious fanatics of every stripe. Half the loudmouth preachers in New York showed up to further their private agendas, and the oratory became increasingly vehement as zealots mistook the idea of a religious sanctuary for a license to denounce everyone who didn't share their beliefs. Stoked on television and booze, the night crowds were not inclined to share anything.

“You caused this, you sinners. This is God's retribution for your evil ways.”

“I didn't cause nothin', you butthead.”

“You're going to hell.”

“Ain't this it? Shit, man, you're here. That's bad enough.”

In place of the ecumenical supermarket Garcia had envisioned, the captain had blacks and whites using the Bible as a weapon in their endless strife; anti-Semites turning the Gospel into virulent poison in their relentless persecution of Jews; and Catholics and Protestants bringing their ancient feuds to the Upper West Side. In the most culturally diverse of cities, each verbal attack prompted a quick response from the offended parties, and it didn't take long before everyone was offended. Jeers and whistles turned to fisticuffs and blows, and in New York City at the end of the 20th Century, Garcia knew automatic assault weapons could appear at any moment.

At Garcia's orders, the cops changed into bullet-proof vests and riot gear and showed no tolerance for the intolerant. Locked in his holding cells upstairs were two gentlemen in white robes claiming to be Jesus, seven members of the Aryan Nation charged with attempted homicide, six members of the vicious 129th Street Bloods arrested for possession of weapons, and more mean drunks than anyone cared to count. Downstairs, the lobby overflowed with people lodging complaints, looking for missing friends and relatives, and even a few who wanted into jail because they were afraid the lights were going out and they'd heard the precinct had a generator.

The assassination attempt on the Pope heightened the religious hysteria. Fortunately, the archbishop had returned to Saint Patrick's Cathedral before an anti-Catholic evangelical minister standing on a chair in the middle of the avenue denounced the Pope as the Antichrist.

Shoddily dressed, eyes burning with hatred, he thundered into a bullhorn, “What happened tonight in Rome is a sign from God for us to
burn the papist churches to the ground,
” and before he could utter another word, a body flew from the crowd and tackled him, bringing both men down hard on the asphalt.

“In Ireland I'd kill you,” screamed the assailant, and this statement provoked a pack of Irish Protestant hoodlums who jumped to the preacher's defense. Out of the blue, Amsterdam Avenue turned into the High Road in Belfast. Eight cops waded into the brawl, arrested four drunken men, took away three handguns, and dispatched one crazed preacher in an ambulance.

Angry at seeing his sweet idea turned into garbage, Garcia issued orders to shut down amplification equipment and vigorously confiscate weapons. He assembled a force of thirty officers, and a few minutes before seven a line of jittery cops with Garcia in command started a slow sweep up Amsterdam Avenue.

A bottle flew out of the crowd and smashed at the captain's feet. Garcia looked into the angry faces and recognized no one from his precinct. He knew his people, the good, the bad, and the worst, and now his street was filled with strangers,
auslanders,
and almost all white. He wondered what happened to the preacher who'd started it all. He wondered why religion so quickly turned to prejudice and condemnation. Cosmic questions with no time for answers. The Millennium Religious Sanctuary of the 24th Precinct had become an oasis for rowdy drunks.

He sent an order down the line: “Gas masks.”

The cops moved forward and the people resisted. “Let 'em have it,” he commanded, and a cloud of tear gas swept over the crowd.

13

Doc had placed video cameras around the room to record the Midnight Club's grand experiment, and with Jody needing something to do, he thought footage from a hand-held camera would add a touch of style to the documentation. He scrounged through cabinets until he found a decent Sony autofocus.

“Ever use one of these things?” he asked her.

“Not for years.”

He gave her a quick lesson, saying quietly, “Just make a videotape and save your questions for later.”

“Gotcha.”

She looked through the viewfinder and panned the room. “Is it on?” she asked.

“See the display?”

“Yeah.”

“Then it's on.”

“You sure?”

“Just squeeze the trigger and shoot.”

He turned on a soft flood, sat down in a comfortable captain's chair in the lounge, and faced the camera. Jody looked through the viewfinder and focused on Doc looking cheerfully professorial in a freshly donned tweed coat and tie.

“When I start to talk, you hold on me, and when I move around, follow and shoot anything interesting. We can always edit this later. All right?”

“Okay.”

“What we're doing now is pretty well scripted,” he said. “This is practice for what will happen later tonight. Ready, Jody?”